On the basis that it can’t get much worse, yes I think it will get better.
Providing Phil Spencer spends time cleaning house, booting out the scumbags and talentless hacks, and investing in proper talent and content.
I don’t think Microsoft will tolerate the mishandling of the franchise that has seen the game haemorrhage players. You can see with things like Halo MCC (in the current state) and products like Age of Empires Definitive Edition that they generally seem to handle their franchises with respect and care.
I would be very dubious we’d get products of such poor quality like WC3 Reforged and current WoW under Microsoft, or any BS “engagement” metrics.
Kids with xbox Controllers playing dh will be flooding Arenas, raids and dungeons, crying about having not enough spells to bind in their buttons and Batterie getting low
We won’t know for some time, but if WoW is on the Xbox pass than it is possible they will focus on growing the playerbase instead of milking it, ie make WoW fun again.
Wow has had over 100M players try it. That’s a lot of potential customers to be lured back to Azeroth.
Pretty sure their analysts will believe they can make money, and why not? At $70B, you’ll need to rake in maybe $7B in profit per annum to justify that. Far from inconceivable with the popularity of gaming.
I think this will be an overall positive move forward for Blizzard. Microsoft have demonstrated in the past few years that they are able to treat their IPs right, regardless of size. Unlike current ActiBlizz, their interest is with enhancing their platforms (like Game Pass and the larger Xbox ecosystem), and they know that doing so would mean playing the long game. Current ActiBlizz are mostly interested in chasing short-term gains, which is antithetical to Microsoft’s way of doing things.
I don’t think the old Blizzard will ever return, but I think we can expect Microsoft to handle their IPs with care. They even gave a nod to StarCraft, something Blizzard have not done in years.
I think if things go bad there will be that one guy in this community that ‘‘always knew it would be worst’’ because (inserts what he thinks is his highly qualify opinion that noone cares about).
I agree I mean just looking at how well Bethesda has done since merging and they have been left alone alongside the studios under them to get on with it and MS for the most part seems from what I have seen not got too heavily involved with the day to day running of them or the studios under them and given how well things like DOOM (2016) and DOOM Eternal have done I have a bit more faith in MS to be respectful of all the IP’s they have acquired with this. Think it will be n good hands.
Well Microsoft sure has money to back up if feature or even expansion happends to fail. Also their business philosophy is very different from Activision/Blizzards. Long term over short term. They just need to clear current spergs from Blizzard offices next.
Fair enough, but even if you whittle those numbers down to individual customers, it’s got to be in the tens of millions. It’s far easier to bring a customer back to something they have tried before than to get them to try something new.
