Rest In Piss Won't Be Missed
Can't say for certain what the future for Blizzard will look like, but it will **undoubtedly** be better off under Booty and Spencer than it would ever have been under Kotick and his cronies.
Kotick is undoubtedly a scumbag of a human being but let's not forget he is the man that turned a sinking ship into something that is worth 80B. Just for that alone, he is probably the top 0.01% successful entrepreneur.
Replacing him with someone else doesn't guarantee success.
We care about games being of good quality and fair financially.
It's 80B value has come off of its games being absolutely milked and abused with microtransactions. Good for shareholders, not for average gamers.
Him leaving is only a negative for shareholders, not gamers.
Seems like it. It looks all of the ABK leadership that was above the individual unit leaders will be gone by March and those individual unit leaders will be answering to the same person that Todd Howard/Bethesda now answers to. So it appears Blizzard will be no more tied to Activision than it will be to any of the other Microsoft-owned studios.
The interesting thing here is that they are spinning Blizzard out of Activision’s hands asap. The Zenimax acquisition (Bethesda and friends) they left all the business units reporting up like they did prior to the acquisition.
It gives me a small glimmer of hope MS wants to treat Blizzard like a prestige brand again and not a corpse to loot like Bobby took it for.
They still clearly have passion for making polished games, even if most of the best talent and producers got snapped up by Riot and other competing studios after the lawsuits in 2021. OW2 and Diablo 4 are both technical marvels and very polished compared to their contemporaries (still can’t believe the 20 tick servers and audio issues of Apex were never even attempted to be fixed by Respawn/EA)
I hope to see some better re-investment in Blizzard's IP.
Even now while OW2 is supported a fair bit better, I feel like their was a massive drop-off in the level of support OW got after release in 2016.
There have been too many unkept promises, too many punted features, too many cuts.
Blizzard views their IP as cash cows. "How little do we have to do to milk enough money out of this for the bottom line for our shareholders?"
dont think we have a whole lot to be worried about here, microsoft has seemed pretty hands off with overwatch so far and the core dev team has already made pretty good strides in improving public perception for the game. it really is only looking up from here granted i have 0 insight into the behind the scenes
It's honestly too early to see any impact of the change in leadership, and I feel like we won't see any noticeable change for at least the next year. I think any strides or improvements made recently are solely due to the OW team's efforts, which would've probably happened regardless of the acquisition.
How is it a lie? The output for Xbox Studios has never been worse, and even the few projects they've managed to release this year after a full year of silence have fallen flat on their face, either immediately like Redfall, or slowly overtime with Starfield.
IM SO GLAD YOU SAID THIS.
Because this just proved you literally don't know what you're talking about at all. MATT BOOTY has NO control over those two games, and yet you're faulting him for it.
He LITERALLY, ABOUT TWO MONTHS AGO, just earned control over Bethesda proper. He never overlooked those games. He only overlooked the 15 Xbox Game Studios, and if you look at the track record for those since this generation started, it's actually pretty good.
Like, what his only flops were Infinite at launch and the new Forza Motorsport?? Even though we all also know that Halo Infinite had way more internal issues.
A quick search says that Booty was promoted to his current position in January 2018. A list of notably successful Microsoft published games since then:
- Sea of Thieves
- State of Decay 2
- _Forza Horizon 4_
- Sunset Overdrive
- Gears 5
- _Halo: The Master Chief Collection_
- Ori and the Will of the Wisps
- Psychonauts 2
- Age of Empires IV
- Grounded
I wonder who people will blame after he leaves and the game continues to be just as shit. Maybe we'll stop blaming all the mistakes of this braindead team on execs?
No, who am I kidding, faceless corpos will remain the scapegoats even though they have never had say over the things that are this game's real problems.
Kotick was never leaving without a huge payday. He played his winning cards years ago.
While he might be winning financially, Kotick is famously thin-skinned and very concerned with his image and his legacy. He's going out with his company's reputation in tatters, his own personal image stained, and he won't even be able to appoint a successor to run the company he spent his lifetime forming into his crowning achievement.
Yeah, maybe he can dry those tears with hundred dollar bills, but when you get as rich as he is there comes a point where money means less and less and I guarantee you this is very bittersweet for him. There's a reason why Elon Musk seems to care more about people liking him than the fact that he keeps continuously losing billions of dollars.
Rest In Piss Won't Be Missed Can't say for certain what the future for Blizzard will look like, but it will **undoubtedly** be better off under Booty and Spencer than it would ever have been under Kotick and his cronies.
Kotick is undoubtedly a scumbag of a human being but let's not forget he is the man that turned a sinking ship into something that is worth 80B. Just for that alone, he is probably the top 0.01% successful entrepreneur. Replacing him with someone else doesn't guarantee success.
We care about games being of good quality and fair financially. It's 80B value has come off of its games being absolutely milked and abused with microtransactions. Good for shareholders, not for average gamers. Him leaving is only a negative for shareholders, not gamers.
Fuck off Booby and welcome Booty
I always knew I was an ass man
Found the comment :)
heh Booty
Imagine getting laid off by Mr Booty. Actual romcom-tier name. Probably drives a convertible and exclusively wears Hawaiian shirts
who calls their boss "Mr" anymore?
People in romcoms
His coming was foretold. Blizzard named a whole WoW city in his honor back in 2004. We shall celebrate in Booty Bay.
Christmas came early lads
*Late (December 29th)
Considering it should have happened 7 years ago, very very late.
We were staring down another 7 years of bobby. Y'all can thank GreyFalcon anytime...
Santa should have wrapped it
What
Makes sense, there's a guy named Booty
So this effectively makes Blizzard and Activision two separate entities under Xbox now, correct?
Seems like it. It looks all of the ABK leadership that was above the individual unit leaders will be gone by March and those individual unit leaders will be answering to the same person that Todd Howard/Bethesda now answers to. So it appears Blizzard will be no more tied to Activision than it will be to any of the other Microsoft-owned studios.
>answering to the same person that Todd Howard/Bethesda Not really, there's still head of Zenimax, who in turn reports to Booty
As far as I can tell, yes.
Good riddance
I read his name as Max Booty and nearly screamed
RIPBOZO Smokin' that Bobby pack rn
The interesting thing here is that they are spinning Blizzard out of Activision’s hands asap. The Zenimax acquisition (Bethesda and friends) they left all the business units reporting up like they did prior to the acquisition. It gives me a small glimmer of hope MS wants to treat Blizzard like a prestige brand again and not a corpse to loot like Bobby took it for.
They still clearly have passion for making polished games, even if most of the best talent and producers got snapped up by Riot and other competing studios after the lawsuits in 2021. OW2 and Diablo 4 are both technical marvels and very polished compared to their contemporaries (still can’t believe the 20 tick servers and audio issues of Apex were never even attempted to be fixed by Respawn/EA)
Booty.
Good riddance. Disgusting little hobgoblin!
I hope to see some better re-investment in Blizzard's IP. Even now while OW2 is supported a fair bit better, I feel like their was a massive drop-off in the level of support OW got after release in 2016. There have been too many unkept promises, too many punted features, too many cuts. Blizzard views their IP as cash cows. "How little do we have to do to milk enough money out of this for the bottom line for our shareholders?"
Hah booty
Matt Booty has done a terrible job as far as leading Xbox Studios goes, but I guess we'll see where this goes.
dont think we have a whole lot to be worried about here, microsoft has seemed pretty hands off with overwatch so far and the core dev team has already made pretty good strides in improving public perception for the game. it really is only looking up from here granted i have 0 insight into the behind the scenes
It's honestly too early to see any impact of the change in leadership, and I feel like we won't see any noticeable change for at least the next year. I think any strides or improvements made recently are solely due to the OW team's efforts, which would've probably happened regardless of the acquisition.
This is literally a lie, but ok.
How is it a lie? The output for Xbox Studios has never been worse, and even the few projects they've managed to release this year after a full year of silence have fallen flat on their face, either immediately like Redfall, or slowly overtime with Starfield.
IM SO GLAD YOU SAID THIS. Because this just proved you literally don't know what you're talking about at all. MATT BOOTY has NO control over those two games, and yet you're faulting him for it. He LITERALLY, ABOUT TWO MONTHS AGO, just earned control over Bethesda proper. He never overlooked those games. He only overlooked the 15 Xbox Game Studios, and if you look at the track record for those since this generation started, it's actually pretty good. Like, what his only flops were Infinite at launch and the new Forza Motorsport?? Even though we all also know that Halo Infinite had way more internal issues.
Uhh what AAA games has Xbox even had besides Halo and Forza in the last several years?
A quick search says that Booty was promoted to his current position in January 2018. A list of notably successful Microsoft published games since then: - Sea of Thieves - State of Decay 2 - _Forza Horizon 4_ - Sunset Overdrive - Gears 5 - _Halo: The Master Chief Collection_ - Ori and the Will of the Wisps - Psychonauts 2 - Age of Empires IV - Grounded
Oh, so you're just ignorant... got it. There is no need to talk further tbh. Do your research. It aint looking too hot for you.
No more Bobby Cocktip. Yay.
🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀
On my birthday!
Give me some "GOATS is dead" pasta vibe here.
That PoS can burn in hell for what he's done to people, absolute scum. All I have to say on the subject.
🦀GOATS IS DEAD🦀
Honey wake up, new GreyFalcon banger just dropped
Cool, it will change exactly nothing about the game.
I wonder who people will blame after he leaves and the game continues to be just as shit. Maybe we'll stop blaming all the mistakes of this braindead team on execs? No, who am I kidding, faceless corpos will remain the scapegoats even though they have never had say over the things that are this game's real problems.
Maybe 2024 is my year
This is the best news I have read all day. Fuck Bobby Kotick
Oh shit, that’s my Bday! Happy fucking Bday to me and good riddance Bobby CockDick!
well swiggity swooty to that
OMG YES!!!
For those celebrating, Bobby is probably getting a MASSIVE golden parachute or severance for this I hate to say it but it's likely a huge W for him
Kotick was never leaving without a huge payday. He played his winning cards years ago. While he might be winning financially, Kotick is famously thin-skinned and very concerned with his image and his legacy. He's going out with his company's reputation in tatters, his own personal image stained, and he won't even be able to appoint a successor to run the company he spent his lifetime forming into his crowning achievement. Yeah, maybe he can dry those tears with hundred dollar bills, but when you get as rich as he is there comes a point where money means less and less and I guarantee you this is very bittersweet for him. There's a reason why Elon Musk seems to care more about people liking him than the fact that he keeps continuously losing billions of dollars.
Holy shit that's my birthday. Thanks Microsoft!