They weren’t even asking to stop it - they were asking for a delay.
They will however ask for it to be stopped at the preliminary hearing in March for sure.
@jznrpg By that logic buying Bungie was pointless too.
@Cobrakai “ Sony’s own offerings are far superior than Activision’s IPs”
Not in revenue and popularity they aren’t, not even close.
Your first sentence there is exactly why this deal is going through.
And it will likely be crushed once it reaches court - this weeks hearing wasn’t about crushing it - it was about setting a date for the preliminary hearing. Crushing cases is what preliminary hearings are for.
If you’re hoping for 10 random gamers to be able to kill this deal in a U.S. court… you’re really reaching desperately.
They should be pushing for an earlier court date, not asking to delay it. They will very likely win in court on this one.
This may even get killed at the preliminary hearing since this case is arguably duplicate, but if it doesn’t, you could end up with the weird scenario where MS closes this acquisition with this court case still pending, depending on how slow the courts are.
Not super surprising given how poorly VR and AR and all the metaverse stuff have taken off really.
Also outside of the military, you barely see or hear anything about Hololens these days.
Lol resupply breaks would become reformat breaks. Plus windows updates mid combat.
I also can’t imagine wearing a Hololens or any other headset for hours like that. Especially when you’re already carrying all the other equipment our soldiers carry today.
@Christopher Price increases due to inflation occur indeed, but Jim has been doing price increases long before the current mess that is our global economy.
And yes, layoffs suck, but they don't necessarily impact my opinion of an exec when it is in extenuating circumstances like this - I still regularly say on here that I believe the best Sony/PS leaders/execs in recent times have been Tretton, House and Layden, and Tretton oversaw the biggest layoffs at Sony I've s...
I do think/agree that Halo as a franchise has been mismanaged for ages, basically the entire duration of 343's existence. But Halo isn't the root cause of these layoffs - everything going on in the world right now is.
They (Xbox) probably thought they would be able to sustain their current level of funding, and well, that rug got pulled out from under them this week by corporate. Unfortunately, at that point, something has to give.
Unfortunately, I doubt t...
@Christopher That assumes he had the opportunity to re-assign them though. I’ve seen plenty of games industry layoffs occur because your corporate overlords just decide to suddenly slash your budget by $X million.
Ultimately, I don’t really hold him responsible and I won’t hold Jim Ryan responsible when Sony does the same thing. The current state of the US (and the world) is pretty bad, possibly the worst it’s been in my lifetime.
The difference is when people say they like backcompat games, it's because they can go back and play nostalgic and legendary games like MGS2, SH2, etc.
None of the games covered in this article even remotely fall into the category of legendary games.
Being a bargain is relative. But it's crazy to be launching an accessory that costs more than the required base console during this economy - but obviously they started work on this years ago and couldn't predict where the world would be today.
I haven't seen any overall numbers and can't find any, but from what I've seen around the internet, friends on linkedin, etc:
343 (artists + engineers + leadership)
The Coalition (producers + QA)
Zenimax (marketing + community managers)
Realistically though, the 10k layoffs are across the board. You can't really blame Phil Spencer for cuts in Azure etc. Or the current economy.
Microsoft are also not alone in this. Amazon and Google just laid off similar/bigger numbers. Sony will at some point too. It's an unfortunate consequence of the economy we live in today.
Did you call for the resignation of Jack Tretton or blame him when Sony laid off 10k employees?
So does anyone know the actual numbers affected @ Xbox studios? Obviously it won't be anywhere near 10k.
I'm not saying they were wrong to pay for exclusivity based off of the Athia demo, but 24 months is insane. It should've been 12 max.
When you put it in context of other timed exclusive games... take any other PS timed exclusive. Let's say Silent Hill 2, they only paid for 12 months of that, assuming Bloober doesn't butcher it, that game is 10x what Athia/Forspoken was at its peak.
There are 3 named in the article:
VGC (Video Game Chronicle)
The Escapist
Windows Central
Those seem like outlets that should be receiving codes - and have received Square codes consistently in the past.
Huge red flag. This game is going to be a flop. Sony were nuts to pay for 2 years of this.
I'd love to see it goto iD software - but realistically, the next game will be by 343. Otherwise they would've cut the studio.
It's not 10k games industry employees lol. Xbox studios won't even have 10k employees.
For context, Zenimax has around 2000 employees. PlayStation studios 4000.
Also, don't be surprised when Sony announces layoffs too. The current economy isn't exclusive to Microsoft.
This rumor was immediately debunked by various outlets including Bloomberg etc, so I’m not super surprised by this statement.
That being said, I think their time is up and they should give ID software the chance to make a Halo game.