Comment by deafpolygon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by deafpolygon | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft wants the IP behind Activision/Blizzard.

This is much bigger than Call of Duty - everyone is just so short-sighted. Call of Duty is the loss leader for Microsoft. But, as an IP, it is somewhat limited so it's ok to pimp this out. This will be Microsoft's Madden, because they will lose more money by limiting it to one platform.

Cross-platform support and play will be a keystone strategy, because they get to plaster Microsoft Gaming everywhere.

- World of Warcraft on consoles (work has been underway for a while to add direct controller support). And this gives Microsoft instant access to a competitor to Sony's FFXIV. Plus Hearthstone can compete with Wizards of the Coast, and Heroes of the Storm gives them a League of Legends competitor.

- Overwatch, combined with Call of Duty and Halo, will lead the way for Microsoft Gaming to have an eSport division for gaming.

- Starcraft - eSports. It gives them something to add to their strategy games stuff, and I would imagine that it's not going to be too difficult to integrate aspects of Starcraft into Halo (or vice versa).

- Mobile games division (Candy Crush) - with access to a division that knows how to profit off mobile, Microsoft can bring this to other games (or other games to Mobile while profiting - something Nintendo screwed up royally and Sony has no clue how to do).

- Crash Bandicoot and Spyro will give Microsoft new mascots to work with, on top of Minecraft, and allow them to attract younger gamers. This has always been a problem for Microsoft - they've always managed to appeal to young adults / new adults, but teenagers that are the target audience of Nintendo are hard. This segment of the market is much more profitable, and increases mindshare for Microsoft.

It's not hard to see how this fits in the overall Microsoft Live streaming strategy, because in the future, it will be about streaming games and less about the hardware. In order to stream games successfully, you need IP.

Starcraft and Heros of the Storm have both ceased development and I doubt Microsoft is interested in reviving them

But I can see them reusing those IP as universes for future games just because it's easier to reuse a well known IP than creating from scratch

True, but they are still being played.

You can still download and install Heroes of the Storm (and it is a pretty decent game). Reviving it and adapting it to the Xbox console would be an easy step.

Starcraft is still being played - and the lore is well established, known and popular world-wide.

God, I love Heroes of the Storm, I've played for so many years, it's a shame no more content is delivered, made so many friends there.

I hope MS revives that game.

Yes that is the real deal, and while Sony keeps whinning they have a very solid first place on this generation, and plenty of exclusives, they are only good boys for those that don't have any clue about the gaming industry, which they are using to their advantage on the regulators.

Nonsense, Sony have every right to be aggrieved at this deal. They have worked hard to maintain their position and work closely with third parties to create excellent games that consistently approach GOTY status.

Microsoft tried this approach and spectacularly mismanaged a large amount of the successful IP they managed to create (Halo, Gears of War, Forza, Fable). They’re now attempting to catch up not through the creation of quality products, but by throwing around ridiculous amounts of capital gained through other parts of the business. Why would any direct competitor not feel aggrieved? It’s essentially impossible to compete with companies as large as these tech giants.

The parent posts talks about Spyro and Crash Bandicoot as potential Microsoft mascots. Those were characters and franchises that Sony helped create and were the original PlayStation mascots.

Right now Sony are ahead, but over an extended period it will become impossible for them to constantly create new IP to compete with nostalgia and established brands - I find it difficult not to sympathise with them.

Sony's has markshare and exclusive deals in much higher quantity than XBox will ever get, lets not pretend it is otherwise.

"Mama/Papa they are also doing exclusive deals".

Limited exclusive deals and outright buying two of the largest publishers in the industry with mountains of valuable IP are two obviously completely different propositions. There’s little point in a discussion if you’re going to try to conflate the two.

That is what Sony is playing at.

in WoW characters have something like 50 abilities

unless they remove 95% of them from WoW I don't see how it could ever be possible to play on a controller

(vs. something like overwatch that has maybe 4 abilities per hero)

There are already mods like ConsolePort which allow you to map abilities and actions to certain button combinations. Certainly not straight forward, but it's allowed for playing WoW on the steam deck, for instance.

https://github.com/seblindfors/ConsolePort

WoW also supports controller directly, now.

Plenty of FFXIV players get along just fine with official controller support, and a few WoW players already playing with controllers. (Let's ignore any mages using Kinect gestures for now...)

However, I wouldn't be surprised if there was some friction from existing WoW players, that might not be so patient with some of the new players jumping on with controllers. The atmosphere just isn't the same there.

Ffxiv players get along fine because of the higher global cooldown and streamlined button press sequences, with very few procs that change what you have to press

1 sec GCD + proc fest wouldn't work well with the same control scheme, and the community would have a meltdown if they changed that

I always find it amusing just how conservative gamers are

Controller users benefit from lower cool down, more action sequence. In a basic controller set-up, you have access to 32 hotkeys, in addition to directional and camera movement (L/R analog). With some additional setup, you can get up to 64 hotkeys easily without too many compromises.

How many keyboard users can access that many from one hand?

In WoW classes have between 21-39 abilities, the average is around 30, in FF14 it is fairly similar (33 is the max). I recommend to look at the FF14 Comprehensive Controller Guide if you want to see how this problem has been solved. And it is viable as some of the FF14 top tier raiders are playing on controller along with a lots of average player.

https://www.akhmorning.com/resources/controller-guide/

edit: typos and punctuation and link updated to the up to date guide

I play on controller for 90% of my interactions.

- with L1, R1 shoulder buttons, I'm able to map ALT (L1), SHIFT (R1), ALT+SHIFT(L1+R1) for directional buttons UP, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT, A, B, X, Y giving me a combined total of 32 buttons.

- With Right Shoulder, I'm able to map CTRL, and gain an additional 32 hotkey buttons by combining it with L/R (Alt/Shift)

- I leave Left Shoulder free for targeting commands (L2+Down for nearest, Up for mob targeting me, L/R for selection, and so on).

- L3 (analog click) and R3 (analog click) buttons do other things, such as activate mouse click under my crosshair, or in combination with CTRL/ALT/SHIFT do more, like mount+dismount.

It's very easy... my main struggle is with targeting which FFXIV has gotten down pat. ConsolePort addon solves this in part, but isn't perfect. Blizzard has to work this out, then it will be fine.

In fact, it is superior to a keyboard/mouse combination because I can have 64 commands on hotkey, plus movement + look separate from that and Left/Right mouse clicks.

How many buttons can you press on the keyboard without lifting your fingers away from WASD or movement keys?

> Blizzard has to work this out

Action targeting is the harbinger of that. On some melee classes you don't have to target anymore if you're using CC's.

Just checked it out -- definitely a step in the right direction.

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