Can you talk more about that? Because as far as I can see game pass is great and I don't see any negative from more games on it....?
Can you talk more about that? Because as far as I can see game pass is great and I don't see any negative from more games on it....?
Yeaaaah....like I said, seen this same nearly worthless speculation since Witcher 2. It's never grounded in fact, just fear or wild guesses.
Could it happen? Sure, sure it could. MS could buy wherever you work, too. That could happen.
Will it happen? Super unlikely. May as well guess at them buying every other company out there. Just because they are doing well and like independence, doesn't mean their Evil Corporate Board won't Sell Out tomorrow. You can make this same baseless guess about any corp. CDPR, Take Two, Ubisoft, Kraft Cheese, whoever. Doing well? Buyout. Doing poorly? Takeover. Seen this since Witcher 2.
As for the utter, utter rot that it's just a business and management will do whatever? Where are the microtransactions in Witcher and Cyberpunk multiplayer? Where are the always-for-pay cosmetics? Where is the 2-hours (not 30 days) to return the game? Where is the DRM? Why pay their people more than the minimum they have to? Why have these forums? Why not churn out a yearly Witcher? Why so many things that don't make them money, or make less money than they could? "It's just for PR." Why bother with doing-it-right-PR? EA rarely does and they make -bank-.
Why not be, say, Tencent? They'd be SO RICH. Garbage logic. Because you don't like a game or how it was released, doesn't mean the Management is just here for the money.
Sigh. Can't see clearly with all that hate in the way.
As for why one company owning so many studios is a bad thing, well, google "monopoly". Homogenous design methods and goals aren't great. Yes, it's so nice to have all those games on Game Pass, but it's nice to have games made by companies that don't do things the MS way.
And, yes, Phil Spencer seems to be pretty solid now, but he won't be boss forever. Not so long ago, MS was not great for games or gaming companies. I won't even bother talking about how flawed the Windows ecosystem is, but it is, and this is not going to make it a lot better or encourage alternatives.
How short our memories are.
Could it happen? Sure, sure it could. MS could buy wherever you work, too. That could happen.
Will it happen? Super unlikely. May as well guess at them buying every other company out there. Just because they are doing well and like independence, doesn't mean their Evil Corporate Board won't Sell Out tomorrow. You can make this same baseless guess about any corp. CDPR, Take Two, Ubisoft, Kraft Cheese, whoever. Doing well? Buyout. Doing poorly? Takeover. Seen this since Witcher 2.
As for the utter, utter rot that it's just a business and management will do whatever? Where are the microtransactions in Witcher and Cyberpunk multiplayer? Where are the always-for-pay cosmetics? Where is the 2-hours (not 30 days) to return the game? Where is the DRM? Why pay their people more than the minimum they have to? Why have these forums? Why not churn out a yearly Witcher? Why so many things that don't make them money, or make less money than they could? "It's just for PR." Why bother with doing-it-right-PR? EA rarely does and they make -bank-.
Why not be, say, Tencent? They'd be SO RICH. Garbage logic. Because you don't like a game or how it was released, doesn't mean the Management is just here for the money.
Sigh. Can't see clearly with all that hate in the way.
As for why one company owning so many studios is a bad thing, well, google "monopoly". Homogenous design methods and goals aren't great. Yes, it's so nice to have all those games on Game Pass, but it's nice to have games made by companies that don't do things the MS way.
And, yes, Phil Spencer seems to be pretty solid now, but he won't be boss forever. Not so long ago, MS was not great for games or gaming companies. I won't even bother talking about how flawed the Windows ecosystem is, but it is, and this is not going to make it a lot better or encourage alternatives.
How short our memories are.
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I think Microsoft buying Actiblizz is an absolute shame and I hope the cartell agency or whateer it is in the US is going to take a closer look at the deal. As for bying CDPR...it's about as likely as them buying Sega, or Squeenix or Capcom, I guess. I hope they will keep their greedy hands to themselves.
Microsoft have been acquiring companies at the rate of one or two every month or so for a long long time.
But Bethesda and now Actiblizz are their biggest coups. The other were "just" single developers, sony does something similar. But Bethesda and Actiblizz are major publishers ain their own right and they are taking previous 3rd party brands away from PS users.
MICROSOFT BUYS ACTIVISION BLIZZARD! CDPR NEXT?
Don't think so. Microsoft buying CD Projekt RED would be like Militech buying Arasaka, (Yes, I know. Most of you would turns this around.), two completely opposing corpos with opposing corpo policies. Nothing good could come from such an alliance. It's better for CD Projekt RED to just continue the direction they're going, and remain a corporate independence.
FYI
They're already billionaires:
Cyberpunk 2077 Made Its Polish Cofounders Billionaires ... But The Game Failed To Live Up To Its Hype
The cofounders of CD Projekt have seen $700 million wiped from their combined net worth since the release of Cyberpunk 2077.
www.forbes.com
That's why they "leave greed to others"
game wise maybe, I really cannot be bothered going through the list, just trying to get you a pictures of the scale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Microsoft
It's probably going to become more and more of a thing among all of the big tech, now that someone said "games are the new social media." Amazon, Facebook, and Google are going to be tripping over themselves to catchup with MS. Gaming companies are publicly traded, including CDPR, so if these abominations with a lot of new cash decide to go after them, they could potentially buy enough stock.
Gamepass isn't a bad thing. Not by a mile. Having more games on it is also a great thing. Adding value to a service is not a bad thing per se. No one is saying it is. It's how you go about it that might be.
@Sardukhar already explained a lot of what I'd say about Microsoft's recent acquisitions.
Generally speaking there is nothing good that comes out of massive conglomerate owning everything. To be clear, this isn't limited to the video game industry. This is being seen across almost every facets of our lives. Entire industries being consolidated into these massive entities granting them incredible control over said industries and, by extension, our lives. It's late stage capitalism - the pursuit of profits above everything else. Nothing good will come of it.
In the long run, MS will be owning massive IPs through which it will control sizeable portions of the industry. Spencer seems pretty decent right now but companies and their immediate goals change all the time. They'll have massive power over the industry and there is no telling what they might try to impose upon it. Just look at the looming threat of NFT's in games. Once you posess large swats of an industry, imposing these sorts of shenanigans becomes far easier.
I have no doubt that this week will be full of boardroom meetings across the gaming industry. Many will be trying to figure out how to keep up with the absolute monster Microsoft is becoming.
There is no doubt it'll happen more and more. It's already happening in fact.
But, not all gaming companies are publicly traded. Epic games, for example, is privately owned. Furthermore, owning CDPR is harder than just buying their stock. Especially with the way CDPR has set up things.
They have quite literally set it up to remain as independant and in control of their company as they can.
In all honesty, I do not see them selling anytime soon. I also don't think they'd immediately dismiss an offer from MS. Considering the kind of money MS seems to be willing to invest in big IPs, you'd be foolish not to at least consider it. I still don't see it happening right now.
Microsoft will buy a company if it thinks that future cash flows will more than compensate for the present purchase price. They will be interested in buying CDPR under that circumstance. I don't think that M$ could purchase the company unilaterally, because a few CDPR executives also own the majority of the shares. But for the right price, those executives will sell.
However, CDPR has a very different corporate culture than M$ (notwithstanding the stupid stuff that the CDPR executives pulled a year ago December). So, I suspect that M$ would have to pay a pretty good premium over the current stock price to entice those majority shareholders to sell. I doubt that their estimate of the value of CDPR would justify that expenditure, because in an efficient market, stock price reflects a reasonable estimate of the firm's overall value.
So, could it happen? Sure, it's just a matter of the right price. But is it likely? I seriously doubt it.
However, CDPR has a very different corporate culture than M$ (notwithstanding the stupid stuff that the CDPR executives pulled a year ago December). So, I suspect that M$ would have to pay a pretty good premium over the current stock price to entice those majority shareholders to sell. I doubt that their estimate of the value of CDPR would justify that expenditure, because in an efficient market, stock price reflects a reasonable estimate of the firm's overall value.
So, could it happen? Sure, it's just a matter of the right price. But is it likely? I seriously doubt it.
They didn't abandon their treatment of customers. No DRM, no scam tactics, fair prices.
Tell my console that cp77 at launch was not a scam tactic ("it runs surprisingly well"). I may add it still is to be fair, but at least they admit it now.
Moderator: No need to dredge up past grievances here. Back on topic, please.
YES, Please everyone do not irritated the moderators as this thread is very interesting to me. The topic is "just so" as to allow us to talk about some things here that I see often get locked (because of participants getting too angry and breaking the rules with heated posts).
Personally I am very sad by what I see is a drift from the small group of "genius programmers" that did not want to work on weapon systems or large scale bookkeeping and instead had a burring desire to prove (for years) what they were doing was a legitimate art, to now needing to work for big corporations that do not really care about the games anymore than Coke cares about their soda (how many times did they change the formula?).
I guess I see this thing MS is doing as a way for them to allow the DEV to do ART and yet still make money. May not last forever (nothing will) but for now it saved Bethesda in my eyes.
On the otherhand CDPR need no "saving" as has been pointed out they are still the good guys in this industry. Or at least the best there is in the AAA category.
I fully agree. It can be said that the second depends on the success of the first among the options: if the 1.5 patch fails (and I think there is a high probability that this will happen, this silence and lack of communication is a bad indicator), the company will be sold.
Make no mistake. Microsoft is not doing this out of the kindness of their hearts. It's not about the art itself. They're doing everything they can to bring big IPs under their banner and rake in the money associated with these. That is it.
Activision is a behemoth. To acquire it is something else entirely. 70 billions is absurd money, those IPs better bring in the dough.
Oh yes, you are absolutely right. Sorry I did not mean to imply MS was actively seeking out a philanthropic methods to make lots of money AND support the art. I just mean that at least for the foreseeable future this produces the serendipitous result of them leaving the artists alone because of the way MS has planned to make lots and lots of money.
For example I would bet that Starfield would have had NFTs (or some other manipulative way to squeeze money out of the players) in it but NOW will not because of the situation with MS.