Mark Darrah, a former member of BioWare and key player in the Dragon Age franchise, said during a YouTube Q&A that Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard will ‘hopefully be a good thing in the short-term,’ but is more sceptical in the long run.
The former Dragon Age producer, who quit BioWare last year after 23 years with the company, stated that ‘consolidation is usually a bad thing,’ and didn’t mince his words regarding the proposed merger.
I can say that consolidation is probably a bad thing in the long run. Microsoft buying Activision-Blizzard hopefully is a good thing in the short term because it seems like culturally Activision-Blizzard needs someone to go in there with a leaf blower and clean out the dark corners of the thing.
Related Content – Sony PS5 Complete Guide – Everything Explained On PlayStation 5 For New Users
But long-term consolidation is usually a bad thing because once you have sufficient control, you start wanting to control costs, and it means typically creativity goes down, risk-taking goes down. So probably bad in the long-term, maybe good in the case of Activision-Blizzard in the short-term though.
Microsoft has assured Sony console owners that they will not remove Call of Duty from PlayStation formats, and reckons Sony and Nintendo will remain the ‘biggest players in traditional gaming‘ even after the deal is complete.
Despite these assurances, PlayStation boss Jim Ryan has described Microsoft’s pledge to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation as ‘inadequate on many levels.’
[Source – YouTube Q&A via TweakTown]