370°

The Final Nail in Blizzard's Coffin

Proceeding the departure of Jeff Kaplan, we discuss the future of Blizzard

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ab-gaming.com
MadLad1112d ago (Edited 1112d ago )

It's funny.
Companies like EA buy up talent, milk them for all their worth, then close down their studios when they don't meet the ridiculous standards they impose on them.
Activision does the same thing, but then relegates their studios to being little more than CoD support. Not that they aren't known go let go of hundreds of people, even during times of amazing profit returns.

Modern day AAA gaming, people. There's a reason so much talent leaves to produce smaller indie projects.

Kororin1112d ago

Of course this will never happen with Microsoft new studios, it's not like a bunch of their old studios have bit the dust.

FlavorLav011112d ago (Edited 1112d ago )

Well their best developer Bungie left them, Rare is a shell of its former self and I don’t know what ever happened to Lionhead studio. So, I’m not so sure about that comment

littletad1112d ago

Maybe, under Phil at least. But I'm still not convinced. Even if Microsoft continues to be pro-consumer in their business choices, I really don't see them adding "job security" to their list. The "hirer during big projects and layoffs after profits" seems to be the industry standard, no matter the company.

anubusgold1111d ago

@FlavorLav01 Dont care what you say Viva Piñata is one of the best games rare made .

MadLad1111d ago (Edited 1111d ago )

What does MS have to do with this?

1st party publishing is a much different beast, and has a slew of factors that need to be taken into consideration.
1st party development can be broken down to a simple investment on the hardware you're trying to sell.

If you're simply trying to knock on MS here, I'll just bring up that Sony basically killed off their Japanese branch, focusing more on the Eastern market, and aren't exactly ecstatic for projects, and studios, that aren't guaranteed successes.

This is coming from someone who mainly plays PC, but has only bought Sony consoles the last two generations.
I grabbed a PS5, purely because I got a great price for my Pro, and I knew I would make use of my PS5 down the road, and could still play my PS4 titles.
I just want to see them do better. Much like I'm happy that MS has new talent making new games, and I want Nintendo to be more realistic with the pricing of their first party titles after time, and concentrate on stronger hardware.

1Victor1111d ago

@Kororin Of course this will never happen with Microsoft new studios, it's not like a bunch of their old studios have bit the dust. /S
There I fix it 🤷🏿 🤪 😂

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1112d ago Replies(2)
ScootaKuH1112d ago

People move on. When I leave the company I work for later this year I wonder if they'll also be thinking it's the end for them?

Of course they won't, they'll replace me. Loss of talent is hard but I'm sure blizzard will be fine.

MadLad1112d ago (Edited 1112d ago )

Blizzard has been pissing off their fanbase for years.
More money might be had, but their name is being run through the mud.

Short term revenue vs long term revenue.

People blame MS for the "downfall" of Rare, but the general mismanagement of the company was pushing key talent out of the company years before the acquisition.
It's easy to say they'll simply replace you, but in a creative industry it's not that simple.

Kororin1112d ago

People blame MS for the "downfall" of Rare, but the general mismanagement of the company was pushing key talent out of the company years before the acquisition.

This is untrue, people left after Microsoft sidelined them and had them do nothing for years except a few odd ball Kinect games, and what's the excuse for Lionhead?

MadLad1111d ago (Edited 1111d ago )

@kororin

That's inaccurate on many levels. It's already proven fact, based on interviews, that Rare was highly mismanaged through the 90s. An era where most people know Rare for, and most of their key franchises were developed.

Most of the lead talent behind these titles had already left and created new studios before the acquisition happened.

MS also gave a whole lot of creative freedom to the studio for years. They only relegated them to purely Kinect after several titles didn't meet sales expectations. Smart move, being their work on Kinect was highly popular.
I'll also point out that the, at that time, key talent in the company saw a lot of potential in the hardware and legitimately wanted to work on it, themselves.

Now it's 2021, Rare proved themselves to MS via the success they had on the Kinect and now, yet again, they're purely working on their own projects.

That's the simple truth.

PrinceAli1111d ago

What kind of stupid ass take is thiss loool!?!?!

notachance1112d ago

The old blizzard who made starcraft, warcraft, diablo all departed and made a new studio already anyway

Jiub1111d ago

Is that why we're getting remasters of old titles? I heard Warcraft III was a disaster but a part of me is looking forward to Diablo II Resurrected.

Cernunnos1111d ago

Diablo II Ressurected isn't even being made by Blizzard. It is being developed by Vicarious Visions under the Blizzard name. The team behind the Crash Bandicoot Nsane trilogy.

anast1112d ago

Not sure this matters at this point. Bliz is probably "deving" for Candy Crush.

Fist4achin1112d ago

Just not going to support them anymore. Not after that tournament where they penalized the winner for supporting Hong Kong.

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60°

The Outerhaven interviews Francisco González of Grundislav Games

The Outerhaven interviews Francisco González of Grundislav Games about his passion for Point and Click games.

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theouterhaven.net
110°

10 Biggest Xbox Mistakes of All Time (So Far)

The Xbox brand has done a lot of good over the years, but their various blunders are pretty wild to look back on in their magnitude.

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culturedvultures.com
piroh1d ago (Edited 1d ago )

Ironically number 9 can save them at this point (releasing games on multiple platforms)

OtterX6h ago

You could add the naming scheme for the consoles, it just confuses customers. I know they wanted to avoid traditional numbering bc it would always be lower than their competitor, but this whole 360 then One then Series thing is confusing af. Imagine a Soccer Mom trying to figure this stuff out. I still mistakenly call the Series X the One from time to time on accident.

RNTody5h ago

Don't forget about the Xbox One, Xbox One X and Xbox Series X! Good luck to Soccer moms around the world.

Cacabunga6h ago(Edited 6h ago)

Phil Spencer is the worst that has happened to Xbox.
They built a respectable brand up to Xbox one. Then this guy took over and things became a joke

Reaper22_47m ago

He still has his job. Something you can't say about Jim Ryan.

Cacabunga30m ago

Both bad execs. One is on job and one thankfully retired.

MaximusPrime_3h ago

Really good video.

I remember the days with RRoD was big news on here, N4G.

Microsoft had it turbulence number of years.

Looking at the success of Sea of Thieves despite being 6 years old, time to release Halo, Forza horizon 4 & 5 on PS5. It'll help their revenue

shinoff218341m ago(Edited 39m ago)

2 of the 4 games they did already sold really well. So it's definitely going down. Idk about halo or forza but I feel those studios they've bought in the last 5 years, their coming

240°

Stellar Blade has sold more physical copies than Dragon's Dogma 2 in Japan, despite PS5 exclusivity

By the looks of it, PlayStation 5 exclusivity does not hurt the sales of Stellar Blade in Japan as the game has passed 90,000 sold physical copies.

Hugodastrevas23h ago

Stellar Blade really deserves way more praise than it got, devs have been adding more and more content, for free, since release and the game already was great to begin with!

BrettAwesome20h ago

More than it got? It got tons, by everyone except the sad wankers who's idea of a sex life, is pulling on their dicks while watching big fake cgi titties 😂

gerbintosh7h ago

Don't see the difference between cgi titties and fake boobs. Also no difference to wanking it to either one of them since both aren't physically there

RiseNShine4h ago

Salty that the game is doing well hm? ;) I suggest some cheese with your whine.

Skuletor1h ago

So you're saying the people that like watching CGI tits didn't praise the game? An educated guess is you meant the opposite.

BrettAwesome4m ago(Edited 3m ago)

@Risenwhine
What the fuck are you talking about? I think it looks like an awesome game. I don't get the sentiment that it didn't get as much praise as it deserved. The only ones who's been shit talking it, are sad wankers with no sex life. Am I whining? How? 😂

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Cacabunga20h ago

I think we can safely claim that Stellar Blade 2 is confirmed!
I got it day one, i have some backlog due to RDR2 i just platinumed.. i will get to Stellar Blade in the near future

shinoff218320h ago

Same but I'm hitting yakuza right now. Stellar blade looks cool though.

neutralgamer199218h ago

Capcom really dropped the ball with DG2. They had easy success on their hand but instead with their stupid decisions ruined the games success

Stellar blade is an amazing game and deserves all the success. For all the artificial hate it got from people who had no interest in the game to begin with this shows if you make a good game it will sell. The so called 1st party drought from PlayStation has meant 4 exclusives in 2024 so far. Other companies need to learn how to run a business and plan for the future

H923h ago

Stellar blade is performing very impressively there, DD2 didn't do well because word of mouth destroyed it's reputation and not about the Microtransactions or performance, bad word of mouth about how the game lacks so many things that were in the first one

Redemption-6420h ago

DS2 sold 2.5M in a little over a week, what the hell are you talking about?

H920h ago

"there", that's Japan, this article is about Japan, the bad word of mouth is about Japan

Hereandthere21h ago

Exclusives matter. No matter what bumbling phil and bond try to say, exclusives is why you buy a console.

The_Hooligan18h ago

How dare you speak common sense!!??

jznrpg13h ago

It would if they added a lot more combat and didn’t focus on graphics

XiNatsuDragnel21h ago

Stellar blade is great excited for 2

anast21h ago

They dropped the ball with dogma. SB is a solid game, it just had to weather the social storm.

shinoff218320h ago(Edited 20h ago)

Said that dd2 was missing things the first one did,like mass effect 2? I haven't played it so I'm really asking.

spss1118h ago

I've played both and I have no idea what people say when they claim it's "incomplete". I've only noticed new things in comparison to DD1 (I would give a list but spoilers). Sometimes I wonder if some people actually played DD1 or maybe they remember it differently. Anyways, if you liked the first one and want more of that, you'll probably like DD2.

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