After more than a year that they could not come to a new agreement and let games being removed from Chinese market (except Diablo Immortal), Blizzard Entertainment will return to China via Xbox consoles.

Back in November 2022, when Activision Blizzard were still independent, could not reach a new business agreement beyond the availability of Diablo Immortal (a whole different agreement) and let January 2023 as the official month of most of Blizzard Entertainment games to be retired.

This week's announcement is basically a Microsoft Gaming led gaming success in China gaming market, that includes to explore bringing new NetEase games to Xbox consoles and other platforms.

NetEase hasn't been in the bench despite losing a powerful partner like Blizzard (which rumors saying that in part, is was due disturbed communication with unpleasant misunderstandings for then CEO Bobby Kotick), as buying and investing in Westerns gaming studios.

For immediate effect, Chinese gamers will expect the recovery of access of previous available titles like World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, and other titles in the Warcraft, Overwatch, Diablo and StarCraft franchises.

Of course, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer considers this agreement a new Xbox victory for bringing more games to more players around the world.

#Gaming #GameNews #youtubegaming 🕹 🎮

In a more than upbeat presentation than the "dire" scenarios that many outlets were rumoring, Microsoft Gaming finally came forward about the future of #Xbox and while acknowledging that all the mentioned things in the special Xbox Podcast episode were planned as early in December, it doesn't need to be taken a change of plans at all.

Xbox Game Studios will be launching 4 unnamed games for Playstation 5 and Nintendo Switch and it was hinted that 2 of them are more than a year since launched, are community-drive games and no, is not neither Starfield nor Indiana Jones and for now they are not committing on more games.

First party Xbox games will be on Game Pass with no End of date, including new launches and actually, new games will be releasing on Day1 and Game Pass is an Xbox service exclusively.

Activision Blizzard King Games will be coming to Game Pass starting with Diablo IV on March 28th.

Phil Spencer interestingly acknowledged that there is an importance of exclusive games for platforms, that includes Xbox, but he foresee that the strategy will be small part for the industry in between the next 5 to 10 years.

Regardless of that, Xbox President Sarah Bond assured that Xbox is not abandoning the hardware business and actually, next-gen Xbox is already in development and we are inbound for some news this Holidays season but, Microsoft Gaming did not acknowledged the future of physical games while addressing Xbox's view on gaming preservation.

Tomorrow I will be given my takeaways in a new gaming podcast episode.

#Gaming #GameNews #youtubegaming 🕹🎮

In a new signal that FTC is not giving up on reversing #ActivisionBlizzard acquisition in the future, the regulator wrote to the 9th Circuit of Appeal Court that Microsoft contradicted on its promise that both Microsoft & ABK will operate independently post-merger.

All this as a result of the recent layoff at Microsoft Gaming that also included redundant jobs and the eSport department of Activision Blizzard.

After failing to win a Preliminary Injunction in Summer 2023, FTC has said that it will continue its inner process that if successful (an uphill road at best as per observers), could force Microsoft to divest ABK, but either way the process could take years.

There is a chance that if by 2024 US Elections, there is a change in FTC administration and a republican one takes over, the FTC could abandon the efforts.

The FTC under Biden Administration, has grown intolerant on mergers that means big companies just becoming bigger but, the low success rate has been questioned by Congress with tax money being used just to fail and FTC requesting more funding regardless.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has denied FTC's accusation on the #ABK independence promise post-merger, indicating that Activision was already on plans for running layoffs before the deal's closure is incorrect to fully attribute to Microsoft Gaming's process.

#Gaming #GameNews #youtubegaming 🕹🎮

The week started strong in the rumor mill for #Xbox & noise got so load that Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer acknowledged that there are things to talk about including the future of Xbox & will be scheduling a presentation next week.

#Gaming #GameNews #youtubegaming 🕹🎮

Microsoft reported its Q2 2024 performance with $62 billion in revenue & net income of $21.9 billion, both a raise respectively of 18% & 33%.

Microsoft Gaming & #Xbox were up 61% of revenue on content, 3% in hardware & 49% in gaming revenue YoY.

And yes, this is the first quarter that includes Activision Blizzard.

Meanwhile other segments of Microsoft were up except Surface business which went down by 6% YoY.

#Gaming #GameNews #youtubegaming 🕹🎮

Activision Blizzard run an additional layoff aside from Microsoft Gaming's last week, this time impacting 83% of its #Esport business letting go 60 people.

The now Microsoft-owned conglomerate feels that 12 people is enough to operate taking in-context that both Call Of Duty and Overwatch League are now operated via outsourced companies.

#Gaming #GameNews #youtubegaming 🕹🎮

Project Odyssey was an unannounced #Blizzard game in development that was cancelled after this week's Microsoft Gaming layoff that included ABK.

Reportedly the game was in development since 2018 & was a Minecraft X Rust kind of universe.

#Gaming #GameNews #youtubegaming 🕹🎮

Turn 10 boss Alan Hartman is now leading #Xbox Game Studios after 18 years tenure with Forza Motorsport developer.

Microsoft Gaming restructured after the ABK deal closure and now Matt Booty is President of Game Content & Studios and Sarah Bond as Xbox VP.

#Gaming #GamingNews

The top takeaways of #Xbox & Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer on his turn at Gamescom 2023:

-Xbox is looking to preserve Xbox 360 after game store closure.
-NO mid-cycle upgrade for this gaming gen from Xbox
-Xbox Series S remains part of future plans.

#Gaming #GamingNews

Final recap of Day 2 of FTC Preliminary Injunction against Microsoft buying ABK:

-As with Jim Ryan, Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida originally didn't have any issue as Phil Spencer called himself the day it was announce the transaction
-Spencer reiterates that Xbox exclusive games are not the 100% od the day-to-day at Microsoft Gaming nowadays
-Spencer: “Sony has a significant catalog of exclusives games. It’s drastically larger, dramatically larger than what we have on Xbox today. Both Sony and Nintendo’s first-party is stronger than Xbox.”
-FTC tried to reinforce Spencer saying under oath that Call Of Duty will be still releasing for Playstation
-At the same time, Spencer did acknowledged that beyond the 10 year mark thing cannot be assured as it will depend the state of trhe gaming market itself
-FTC tried to make it sound weird that Microsoft is paying almost $70 billion for a gaming conglomerate just to get ahold of mobile gaming studios as main target, but Spencer backfired that mobile gaming is one of the footprints that Xbox is aiming at
-FTC for the third time brought Nintendo narrative
-A common-sense info that the FTC should know, but their lawyer asked if Microsoft needs to pay the agreed fee to Activision Blizzard shareholders right away. Spencer replied: “No, when you acquire something it’s not a payment. It’s really a transfer of cash into an asset called Activision that you believe it retains the value that you have acquired. It’s incorrect financially.”
-FTC called Dov Zimring, Google’s former Stadia product lead as witness
-FTC asked Zimring to describe Stadia
-Zimring: “To our knowledge we had the best technology in the market. We had performance capabilities that didn’t exist in the [cloud] market like 4K.”

“We had prototyped on Windows early on... the mission we had established at the very beginning was to enable revolutionary experiences... we saw Windows as limiting to innovate in that regard because we didn’t have control over the operating system.”

-Zimring acknowledged that Stadia SDK was Linuix-based due operating cost saving
-The closure of Stadia Games & Entertainment with the sudden stop of investment for AAA games was due wrong projected numbers
-Originally, Google was willing to spend five years building AAA games for Stadia
-FTC returned to Spencer
-FTC wanted to a third time force Spencer to peldge on COD availability on Playstation but WAS CUT BY THE JUDGE WHO APPEARED TO BE ANNOYED ON THE FTC LAWYER LINES OF QUESTIONING THAT WERE STRAIGHT DISSINGENOUS.

Judge: "I don’t need that, I’m going to cut off your questioning."
-Judge wrapped things for today and will NOT ACCEPT this process to go beyond next Thursday, pretty much in line of Microsoft desired timeframe (5 days)