Call of Duty. Imagine all of these brands becoming exclusive to Microsoft platforms.

Blizzard Battle.net. Your Blizzard games are easily accessible so you can quickly jump in and start playing. Also available for Mac for Windows and as a. Blizzard disappointed many Mac gamers when it failed to release Overwatch for macOS. They see a message letting them know they can buy the game for PC, PS4 and XBox. Nope, but it sure could run it at a different graphics setting. Nightmare creatures 3 angel of darkness pc download torrent.

The Internet-melting fanboy reaction would make for great message board fodder, but in reality eliminating the revenue streams of platforms these products are already on makes no business sense. It’d be cutting off your nose to spite your face. It’s no secret that Vivendi is to help solve its own debt woes. Reuters reports that they’ve gone so far as to, including Microsoft. Naturally, the list of companies in any space who could afford the $8 billion asking price is a short one, and in the immediate video game sphere, Nintendo is coming off their.

That leaves Microsoft as the only established gaming superpower that could potentially do this deal. Of course, in a move this complicated, a million planets have to align to make it happen.

So rather than focus on whether Microsoft could buy Activision-Blizzard, we must ask, should they? And beyond that, what if they did? Let’s examine how each of the major properties under the Acti-Bliz umbrella might fare as Microsoft exclusives. • Blizzard: It’s mostly a moot point here, really, since Blizzard has no stake in the console wars. Its big three franchises – Diablo, Warcraft, and Starcraft – have always been PC exclusives. Sure, Microsoft could make all Blizzard games exclusive to Windows operating systems and cut out the Mac audience, but it likely wouldn’t, as any bad blood between Gates’ and Jobs’ outfits was wiped up years ago when Redmond started shipping Office suites for Cupertino’s operating systems. Microsoft might instead choose to ditch Games for Windows Live and run their PC games business off of the Battle.net infrastructure that Blizzard has already built.

In addition, it’s also possible that Microsoft could pressure the Irvine, Calif.-based hitmakers to get in gear on that and make that an Xbox exclusive. Given the, this would actually be a bold, killer-app kind of move for the Xbox platform. • Call of Duty: Here we go – the crown jewel of the Activision side of the business.

Imagine if it was an Xbox exclusive? The question Microsoft would have to ask itself is, would it be worth the cost? Call of Duty is the biggest brand in gaming, yes, but according to previous NPD reports, as much as 40% of its sales come from the PlayStation versions of the game. That equates to hundreds of millions of dollars with each year’s iteration. How many Xbox 720 consoles would have to be sold to offset the loss of the PlayStation-generated revenue? If Microsoft feels that having Call of Duty exclusively – paired with the first-party powerhouse that is Halo – would be enough to knock Sony completely out of the console race, they might consider it, but one game does not make or break a platform these days, no matter how big.

If Microsoft and Sony were cats, it’d be like taking one of Sony’s nine lives. • Skylanders: The ace up Activision’s sleeve.

Skylanders has quickly – but very quietly, in hardcore gaming circles, at least – exploded into both a video game and a toy phenomenon. The software would chart in the NPD top-10 sales rankings every month if not for the fact that NPD puts games with a peripheral packed in on a separate list. Meanwhile, the add-on toys have created shopping frenzies at retailers across the nation. And unlike brands such as Tony Hawk, Guitar Hero, and to a much lesser extent even Call of Duty, Skylanders is only growing.

It is at the beginning of its profitability curve. It’s also the exact kind of kid-friendly (and potentially Kinect-friendly) franchise that Microsoft has sought ever since they purchased Rare for $325 million in 2002.

But even more than Call of Duty, Skylanders not only derives an even bigger portion of its profits from multiplatform sales on the PlayStation 3 and Wii, it actually builds its business model around it. The portal for your Skylanders figures plugs into any console, and because the characters’ stats are stored on the figures themselves, your Wii-owning friend can bring his exact avatar over to your house and jump into your game world on Xbox 360. Factor in the cost of manufacturing the toys and it would seem foolish to lock Skylanders exclusively to the Xbox. • Transformers, Spider-Man, and other licensed titles: These are timed agreements in place with each property’s respective license-holders that must be renegotiated and re-upped every few years.

Again, however, to maximize the investment you make with the Hasbros and Marvels of the world, it’s imperative to sell as many copies of each game as you can – and you can only do that with multiplatform releases. And these aren’t the kinds of games that inspire people to buy consoles just to play them, so it’s actually counterproductive to freeze out Sony and Nintendo here.