Xbox is canceling Contraband, announced in 2021 from Avalanche Studios (Just Cause), after four years of radio silence, sources tell Bloomberg News. This news arrives weeks after a mass layoff in which Xbox canceled several other big titles. - Jason Schreier
Microsoft seriously bought all the IPs to make sure none of them got used
That’s straight up the behavior of a company that wants to create a monopoly. Buy up the smaller companies so the competitors can’t buy them up and then just shut those companies down so their products can’t compete with the existing money makers. The money they put into those studios for game development is just a charade to please the authorities. Cause if they would shut those companies down immediately after purchasing that would be undeniably anti-competitive behavior and illegal even in the US.
They bought Rare simply becaues they thought it’d take Donkey Kong from Nintendo
Which is exactly what I expected them to do. I laughed at Blizzard fans being hopeful about the acquisition because things didn’t go well at the time. It was always just another step towards closure.
Blizzard fans have a habit of believing Blizzard is still this small indie company with humble games like Starcraft, Lost Vikings, and Diablo, and that it’s just mean ol Activision making them do things like…
sigh
Have two to three whole expansions of Sylvanas Windrunner being not only the Warchief of the Horde, but for all intents and purposes being basically the main fucking character, complete with a writer who brought her previously killed off-boyfriend Nathanos, only as a self-insert.
Like I love Sylvanas, she was my favorite character, but Jesus fucking Christ that was cringe. Not only was it completely out of character for the Horde to give her leadership (Protip: The Forsaken aren’t trusted by anyone because they’re scary fucking zombies who do scary zombie shit, the Horde just figures they’re less dangerous as allies than enemies), but she continously forced the Horde to do horrible shit.
Now if the point was that Sylvanas was evil and the Horde’s mistrust of her was valid, I guess that’d work, but the way it was executed was more like “Look how cool Sylvanas is for doing all this edgy shit.”
I don’t know who the Warchief is now, I honestly don’t think they have any fucking Horde characters left to be Warchief given how often Horde leaders get killed off. Jesus Christ WoW’s story just completely shit itself after Legion.
I got off-topic, my point was Microsoft was never going to save Blizzard from Activision, because Activision isn’t holding Blizzard at gunpoint and forcing them to kill off Heroes Of The Storm, Steal female employees’ breast milk, or making Overwatch 2, Blizzard’s just not a cool company.