This is good news. :)
Putting MS in charge might have saved Blizzard from Activision. Maybe they'd have brought WoW to Xbox, or done something new with the Starcraft IP. Perhaps even a new Blizzard MMO...
It's annoying that so many great Nintendo games are only available for Switch, and I can't run them at 4k/60fps+ on PC or higher-end console. But that's just how things are. And at the end of they day, they're unimportant entertainment products, we're not talking about monopolies/oligopolies controlling something important.
You technically can via emulation, though how legal that is depends on the laws where you are I guess.
On the other hand, as a Mac gamer, maybe it wouldn't be so great? Blizzard have been great at Mac support, with all their titles - except Overwatch - being available on Mac since day 1. But Microsoft hardly releases anything for Mac now days.
I'd be surprised, merger or not, if they ever release any of their new AAA titles on Mac again.
And between the move to Metal as a graphics API and the transition away from Intel CPUs, porting PC games to Mac seems like it'd be rather more of a pain these days.
Some of Blizzard’s titles (World of Warcraft, Hearthstone) were already ported to be M1-native. But even the older titles that haven’t been ported (StarCraft 2, Heroes of the Storm, etc) run great despite being emulated. In fact, they run much faster and smoother on my M1 Mac than they ever did on my Intel Macs!!
You’re right, though, that Apple’s attachment to Metal and lack of built-in support for industry standard APIs like Vulkan is an issue (although a 3rd-party Vulkan implementation is available).
And that's on a base M1 macbook Air with the 7C GPU setup. Although it does have a fan rigged up underneath my laptop stand. Every other Apple Silicon Mac has even more gpu oomph.
Friends with M1/M2 Pro machines are plenty happy with their GPU performance but most of them all just play WoW. One with a M1 Max Studio is enjoying plenty of performance at 4K.
I have a similar setup (except 8 core) and with the mod I don’t feel any need for an external fan for gaming.
Perhaps because small studios start with ready-made game engines that are already ported to Metal?
Leaving out your deep pocketed customers seems like a pretty dumb move to me.
Maybe they'll get Sony sorted out too at some point.
However, I don't believe that tto be the bigger issue. Let's look at this from a bigger perspective: Microsoft is much bigger than Sony. The western world is very much dependent on this giant. Should it have even more power?
When you look at the numbers there is just no way to make the conclusion that Sony are "just as bad" when it come to aquisitions.
I am however absolutely in favor of Sony getting blocked, should they for instance plan to acquire EA, Ubisoft, Rockstar etc.