Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard King for $69 Billion on 2023-10-13

Yeah it does. I don't want to dredge up every game this has happen to, but games like TLoU2, Forspoken, Days Gone, Halo Infinite, and so-on, were receiving negative reviews and/or scores days/weeks/months prior to their respective release dates. IMHO, the worst offenders are the well-known gaming streamers or content personalities (influencers!) who purposely criticize a game over some held bias or incel view, which has led to certain games being reviewed bombed.

Wow. These review sites are more broken than I thought.
 
Wait...



What?

They removed it from the Xbox console store? I'm looking at their PC game storefront and launcher and it actually now has user reviews unlike when Game Pass PC was in BETA (no user reviews in launcher back then, but there were user reviews if you went into the Microsoft Storefront where you could buy the game).

Huh. I wonder why the console doesn't allow user reviews while the PC does?

Maybe different team/manager:)
MS does strange and incoherent things.
 
... who purposely criticize a game over some held bias or incel view, which has led to certain games being reviewed bombed.

Don't forget that in addition to incel views, social justice views are also as influential WRT review bombing. Likely a larger effect as there's more SJWs than Incels.

It's just an unfortunate reflection of the unfortunate state of media outlets hyperbolizing every little thing and fostering combative attitudes among their readership. Said hyperbolization and exaggeration likely a result of media outlets attempting to compete with social media sites for user clicks and views. :(

Regards,
SB
 
It's always been a bit of a nonsense to allow reviews for any product not released.
Rubbish. It's all rubbish!

It's weird cause one of the review site won't allow critic reviews to be published early, so they know the embargo dates and will hold any submitted reviews until that time.
 
I never disagreed, nor agreed, with the point. My point is only that the SM example is irrelevant to that discussion. Indeed, it's poor evidence for a lot of discussions around exclusivity due to its unique situation, Disney itself looking for an exclusive partner and both being considered at the same time.

Cite a whole bunch of cases where Sony has bought exclusive rights, sure, but SM isn't one of them!
But it does because again its an IP that has existed on other platforms including xbox previously.

FF is also another IP that has existed on other platforms all the way back to to the nes , its origin system. Add to that we know that Sony used its Sony Music branch to work out the deal to get FF exclusive on Playstation. So sony has been playing the game from the beginning.
Is that from a Sony fanboy?

You would have to ask them. I'd of course wonder why an xbox or pc fan would post a negative review for a game that wont be out for another 2+ months. Notice there are no negative reviews or reviews of any kind for something like Spiderman 2 on the platform.
 
I'd of course wonder why an xbox or pc fan would post a negative review for a game that wont be out for another 2+ months. Notice there are no negative reviews or reviews of any kind for something like Spiderman 2 on the platform.
Google "spider man 2 looks bad". Why would The Last of Us fans post negative reviews in advance of TLoU Pt II? Because they're homophones. Sometimes snowflakes gonna hate for reasons unrelated to platform wars.
 
We obviously will never know the details but we do know that Bethesda shopped around for a buyer.

Sony likely were either willing to offer less than Microsoft was willing to offer or weren't interested in Bethesda, period. So basically, Sony didn't feel that Bethesda would have been worth 7+ billion USD (if it went into a bidding war between them and MS).

Just like Bungie shopped around for a buyer, but MS weren't interested in them either at the price Sony were willing to spend or weren't interested period. The upcoming ABK deal, obviously altered Microsoft's valuation of Bungie. If the ABK deal weren't on the horizon, I could certainly see MS being interested enough to outbid Sony to acquire Bungie.

All of these deals are conducted out of the public eye, but they are often far more nuanced than people speculate. Did X deal get turned down because a party wasn't interested? Because they were interested but the price was too high? They were interested but another more interesting opportunity presented itself? Etc.

Microsoft likely overpaid for ABK. Why would they do that? To avoid a lengthy drawn out bid war in order to get the deal done as quickly as possible. Plonking down a large almost unreasonable sum of money would serve to scare off other interested parties leaving ABK with only one suitor and thus cut down the process by multiple months. They knew that they would have to face regulatory approval and expected that to take the better part of a year, but they didn't want to have additional months of negotiations and bidding on top of that. IE - try to get the deal closed and approved in roughly 1 year instead of it taking roughly 1.5-2 years.

Regards,
SB

I think it's a fair assessment to call not purchasing Zenimax a boneheaded move. Whole we're not privy to the details we have enough info to speculate upon it. Lots of lovely franchises that would have been a boon to Sony especially with their expansion into releasing PC games.
 
Google "spider man 2 looks bad". Why would The Last of Us fans post negative reviews in advance of TLoU Pt II? Because they're homophones. Sometimes snowflakes gonna hate for reasons unrelated to platform wars.

I am specifically talking about review sites like meta critic

Please see the original exchange for additional context. I am well aware if I go on twitter there are crazies posting about Starfield resolution and frame rate and then saying XBox most powerful console and the same thing happening with 720p 30fps FF16.

 
You would have to ask them. I'd of course wonder why an xbox or pc fan would post a negative review for a game that wont be out for another 2+ months. Notice there are no negative reviews or reviews of any kind for something like Spiderman 2 on the platform.

Um, because they hate Bethesda? Maybe, a fired employee? Maybe, because their dog barks uncontrollably loud every time it hears Todd Howard's voice?

Seriously, owning a particular platform doesn't stop user's from leaving negative / stupid comments on an unreleased game on said platform.
 
Um, because they hate Bethesda? Maybe, a fired employee? Maybe, because their dog barks uncontrollably loud every time it hears Todd Howard's voice?

Seriously, owning a particular platform doesn't stop user's from leaving negative / stupid comments on an unreleased game on said platform.
It could be , or it could be a Sony fan right ?

The real question is why was the game already allowed to be allowed
 
Apparently now MS is saying they had to renegotiate with ABK more of a revenue split to get their games same day at the start of the generation before ABK would take their dev kits. ABK used COD on the ps5 as negotiating power to get a better revenue split. Sony/ ABK had a different rev share than ABK wanted from MS
 
Yes, but nobody is denying that possibility, other than saying it could be anyone.
right but like I said , still doesn't explain why there is already a negative review on metacritic for a game not out but yet sony games don't have negative reviews before release



Anyway


Looks like Sony is willing to forgo ABK games on PS6 if the deal goes through. I guess that means its not that important as exclusives.


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To bad the juicy stuff is redacted. Minecraft dunegons and legends are both on playstation , so does that mean MS was able to develop those games without ps5 dev kits ? If so how would COD be affected by not having ps6 dev kits ?
 
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Oh sweeet baby jesus wtf is happening. We have to deal 8 years with these consoles. If FF17 going to be 240p like it FF7 was on the Playstation lol

Hehe. Sony had already confirmed not before 2027. Hopefully AMD can get it's ray tracing act together over the next half decade!
 
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