Games

Redundant departments / systems already provided by Microsoft will be downsized.

Because that's how they make more money.

When the apes Elon experiments on survive the implants, instead of going insane and trying to tear them out.

Until then we're just in a regular dystopia.

The cyberpunk dystopia is NOW, old man.

Luckily nobody said there were zero well design AAA games, only that I don't much care if the big studios eat each other. You can always make another studio. It's happened before, it'll happen again. This isn't like car manufacturing where startups face overwhelming costs and regulatory burdens to begin work. Get some capital, hire some good devs, come up with a thoughtful concept, and people will pay for it. Shit, they'll pay for virtual goods with no expectation of seeing a finished game (coughStarCitizencough).

but there are experiences that cannot be replicated in the indie sphere at the moment

The key phrase there being "at the moment." And frankly the reverse is a lot more true for more enduring reasons. AAA development is entirely too invested in graphical fidelity at the expense of everything else and entirely too beholden to shareholders to take meaningful risks.

I do not give one tiny, insignificant shit what corpo entertainment goons do to each other or what hats they wear and neither should you. Blizzard as you knew it has been dead for years. This acquisition means nothing. The people that made the Blizzard you knew great can make their own company and probably will if they're still working. Stop caring about companies and start caring about the human beings that make good games. Remember their names, look at who they work for.

Game dev has to grow up just like Film did and you can expect the same market driven patterns to emerge. Indies take risks, the big boys iterate on the formulas they establish, and occasionally they stumble into something legitimately good. So it goes.

But for every big budget film that's good, you'll have a dozen Michael Bay style 'splosion and lens flare fests. That's the expected pattern.

Do people still like the shambling husk that is Blizzard at this point? I've been playing their games since Rock N' Roll Racing and they're not even close to the same company anymore.

The game's currently sitting on "mixed" reviews on Steam, and the rating is steadily going down (67% at the time of writing, which is an all time low), and that's on a platform where you can use mods.

I also literally forgot about it. I guess that's what happens when you release a game that looks and plays like you gave a prompt to Chat GTP and waited for it to build the entire code and voice all the dialogue for it.

I don't think it's fair to consider Starfield, since the game was in development before the acquisition completed. The only significant input I would consider is making it Xbox/PC exclusive.

They did lose their minds, many people left including Jeff Kaplan, the creative lead.

666, mark of the gardener.