Blizzard/Activision, how far will they fall?

[Based and White Pilled]

Diablo 2 and WoW are the games that took me from being a kid with a ps2 to a full on closet super nerd with a second life outside of school (where I tried to pose as a cool kid). It makes me a little sad to see them be so tone deaf repeatedly.

 

[asdf122345]

Having to rely on aging IP's will not trend well in the years to come. They need a new ground-breaking game to reinvent themselves. Overwatch helped the shit show the last few years though.

-wow is essentially dead. classic numbers are way down since launch and retail is a disaster currently. shadowlands will not fix this, time to maybe develop a new MMO or WOW 2.
-d3 was a disaster and is getting dominated by f2p games. (I loved d1 & d2)
-heroes is lame
-overwatch 2 im definitely interested in, but, the game itself is pretty generic and boring.

they are relying on revamping old games and it's getting very stale, FAST.

This. Diablo 4 will be boring quicker than Diablo 3. They need to reinvent themself with a new game, and Overwatch gets boring really quick.

 

[asdf122345]

Ive been playing diablo since the original came out. Although diablo 3 did not live up to expectations, it was not exactly a bad game either. It was just not what people were expecting beause of how good diablo 2 was. In reality, its still a pretty solid game. It sold remarkably well, and as much as I liked to complain about it, I did sink a ton of hours into it, which is more than I can say about PoE and other RPGs.

People see that Diablo 4 has potential. The rune system is back, it's darker, and it has some things going for it that give people hope.

Potential I don't know. The blizzard of the old is dead to me.

 

[Madmick]

Wtf is Arena Valor?

MOBA game for smartphones that is huge in Asia. Vainglory is better, but this game type is more popular over there, and they have more people.

This the chart that had me going WTF. I'd never heard of Free Fire:

 

[illclint]

I stopped buying Hearthstone packs after the whole Hong Kong fiasco.

 

[Madmick]

Good Lord, now they're trying to kill cloud gaming in its nascent stage:
Nvidia’s GeForce Now is losing all Activision Blizzard games, a bad sign for cloud gaming

And it’s frustrating, because the whole premise of Nvidia’s GeForce Now service is theoretically win-win-win: you get to take your existing game library anywhere, game publishers get the same money and much the same relationship with the customer (who’s buying those games from the same Steam, Epic, UPlay and Battle.net stores), and Nvidia gets to rent out access to a computer that simply lives in the cloud instead of on your desk at home.

The past five years have made it incredibly difficult to defend them, anymore. Post-2015 Blizzard and Activision have been shitshows.

 

[rob mafia]

holy shit. even @Madmick 's come around.

 

[CleverGirl]

I don' mind seeing cloud gaming die.

 

[Mau]

MOBA game for smartphones that is huge in Asia. Vainglory is better, but this game type is more popular over there, and they have more people.

This the chart that had me going WTF. I'd never heard of Free Fire:

LOL lost most of their casters to Free Fire. At least in Brazil and most emergent markets.

 

[Law Talkin’ Guy]

Good Lord, now they're trying to kill cloud gaming in its nascent stage:
Nvidia’s GeForce Now is losing all Activision Blizzard games, a bad sign for cloud gaming


The past five years have made it incredibly difficult to defend them, anymore. Post-2015 Blizzard and Activision have been shitshows.

Probably a sign they want to develop their own cloud gaming service

 

[Madmick]

holy shit. even @Madmick 's come around.

I don't find them particularly bad within the context of the modern industry. Every major game publisher has become this. I blame smartphones.

I don' mind seeing cloud gaming die.

LOL, good luck with that. This internet thing is a real fad.

Probably a sign they want to develop their own cloud gaming service

Then maybe they should pull the games when they launch that cloud service? I've never seen a peep about anything in development from them, ever. GeForce Now doesn't even compete for revenue via game content. It's literally a broader platform for all game-makers including Blizzard.

Part of me wishes NVIDIA would be like, "Oh, rly? Cool. We won't be doing any driver development for your games, anymore. People who want to play your games can game on AMD GPUs."

 

[rob mafia]

Part of me wishes NVIDIA would be like, "Oh, rly? Cool. We won't be doing any driver development for your games, anymore. People who want to play your games can game on AMD GPUs."

and amd might say... 'what's a driver?'

 

[Da_Rev_Ong]

Then maybe they should pull the games when they launch that cloud service? I've never seen a peep about anything in development from them, ever. GeForce Now doesn't even compete for revenue via game content. It's literally a broader platform for all game-makers including Blizzard.

Part of me wishes NVIDIA would be like, "Oh, rly? Cool. We won't be doing any driver development for your games, anymore. People who want to play your games can game on AMD GPUs."

Actually, as you stated, almost all the big publishers are doing this. I think this has more to do with how digital media is distributed and monetized more than it is that they simply want to be dicks about it. With a lot of the online interaction possibly being monetized down to each click translating to some form of transaction, a lot of publishers have to figure this type of stuff out. I'm not sure if anyone makes any sort of royalties/residuals off of digital distribution for games, but I remember it caused quite a lot of issues for music and movies a few years back. This might be an indication that the same thing is happening.

Or, they could jut be dicks. But I don't think that's the case if multiple publishers are doing the same thing.

 

[Madmick]

Actually, as you stated, almost all the big publishers are doing this. I think this has more to do with how digital media is distributed and monetized more than it is that they simply want to be dicks about it. With a lot of the online interaction possibly being monetized down to each click translating to some form of transaction, a lot of publishers have to figure this type of stuff out. I'm not sure if anyone makes any sort of royalties/residuals off of digital distribution for games, but I remember it caused quite a lot of issues for music and movies a few years back. This might be an indication that the same thing is happening.

Or, they could jut be dicks. But I don't think that's the case if multiple publishers are doing the same thing.

You can't profit off a cloud-gaming service if you don't have a cloud gaming service to sell, and they don't.

What does it cost them to allow people to play the games over GeForce Now until they launch one? All it does is enlarge their market by expanding their games to devices that otherwise couldn't run them. I simply can't wrap my head around this.

 

[loyalyolayal]

I didn't know he was preparing us for things to come.

 

[Da_Rev_Ong]

You can't profit off a cloud-gaming service if you don't have a cloud gaming service to sell, and they don't.

What does it cost them to allow people to play the games over GeForce Now until they launch one? All it does is enlarge their market by expanding their games to devices that otherwise couldn't run them. I simply can't wrap my head around this.

Believe me, I can't wrap my head around it either. However, if we take into account how entertainment media has been changed through digital distribution (especially in the areas of how people get paid according to how copyright law is outlined) there's got to be a bigger reason than "these guys are just evil assholes who gleefully fuck their player base in the ass at every non-consenting moment." The same thing is happening with EA and other Publishers too, so there is probably something else going on.

I suspect that it's going to come down to money. Let's face it, Nvidia wouldn't even be creating the GeForce streaming platform unless they see a way to be monetized (this is a given). However, it's platform won't hold any value (as you implied) without any games to stream. I suspect that the publishers who own those games (Blizzard included) are clued into that and want to know how they will be compensated too. Taken from that standpoint, it makes sense. Will it leave gamers happy about it? Probably not.

 

[Fraz]

None of this will matter once the new consoles are out anyway.

 

[KaNesDeath]

Then maybe they should pull the games when they launch that cloud service? I've never seen a peep about anything in development from them, ever.

Its stems from their corporate mindset shift when Amazon bought Twitch. Any new service that springs up in gaming Blizzard must receive a cut from it.

 

[Based and White Pilled]

I didn't know he was preparing us for things to come.

That's fucking funny

 

[Madmick]

Its stems from their corporate mindset shift when Amazon bought Twitch. Any new service that springs up in gaming Blizzard must receive a cut from it.

Still doesn't make sense. What's the "cut" on 100% of zero?