Exactly. I don’t mind the odd Live Service game, it’s nice to have something to come back to in between other releases. But nearly everything is designed to be live service nowadays, and they’re mostly just designed to hook you in for an endless grind rather than actually being fun. 

Bungie technically split from MS after Halo 3 and made ODST and Reach while independent but still under contract. As for Activision, that was never an acquisition, merely a long and controlling publishing deal.

Well in good news BTB seems mostly fixed by the last update

I think there are the flaming arms, flaming head, and flaming “effect set”. I think at least one of the 3 is free maybe?

Same here, but not with a hammer. At least that week had fiesta, which made getting sprees muuuuch more reliable

Contractor issues have really varied from studio to studio. Some have the issues, some are fine. I think with ABK it will really end up depending on their strategy going forward

No they almost certainly want the developers as well. There’s only so much you can do with IP without people to make the content. The IP is what’s making the price so high.

It’s not 25%, but he’ll get about $375 million in equity pay-outs alone from this deal. On top of about that again in his contract if they choose to see him off. 

I mean, Xbox has acquired small studios that they worked with for a long time and helped establish as well. They signed both Ninja Theory and Double Fine’s first games. They’d made 4 Forza Horizon games with Playground, etc.....

Legal reasons only I assume. The quiet period Brad talks about means that Xbox legal can’t try and influence Activision until the deal is absolutely complete and official. This is only the announcement that the companies have agreed to an acquisition.

I would be highly surprised if BK stays longer than a few months after the acquisition goes through. Xbox will want him gone, since if nothing else they’d have to pay him so much, on top of all the negative press. But they can’t even talk about any changes to Activision Blizzard until the deal officially closes for…

I’ll just go grab my towel....

Pretty much. Actually I bet you they’re doubling down on raising their kids that way as they see the whole “house of cards” beginning to tumble down around them in a desperate attempt to not become an ostracised group themselves. They’re terrified of becoming targets in the exact way that they’re used to targeting…

The One S had a SLIGHTLY better CPU. Nothing groundbreaking, but enough for slightly smoother performance where the OG Xbox one was only JUST struggling to hit 30 FPS

Yeah I do agree with that. It sounds like Xbox and MS in general have done alot of corporate restructuring over the past 5/6 years, and sharing their own efforts to avoid such issues in that time could be really useful

I don't think he only meant that it would be hypocritical. It also seems like he was implying he thought further statements would come across as Xbox just trying to score "we're holier than thou" points. Which it probably would if they didn't say it just right. At this point action against Activision is needed rather…

I don’t think that’s what he meant. What he’s saying is that they’ve already made a statement on the matter, so at this point he feels like further public comments on the matter would just be Xbox virtue signalling “that they’re better” when A) They have their own history, and B) it does nother more to help.

Yeah, exactly. I don’t think they actually intended to actually call all quidditch players transphobes, but 1 minute with a decent editor would have helped them either rephrase the remark better, or more likely realise how unnecessary it was to make at all and remove it.

Wwhile I agree that many people are miss reading the quote, and that it does not necessarily implicitly imply that all quidditch players (and certainly not Halo players like some comments seem to think) are transphobes. However is is thrown out there so off hand, and so non specifically that it’s inevitable that this…

For the story, I think it was one that was more aimed at being emotionally satisfying for long time fans, than it was on being a particularly interesting as a narrative in it’s own right. For obvious reasons 343 wanted to tie up the Halo4/5 arc, but didn’t want to just drop it. This game was a “reset” narrative, and I…