Microsoft to acquire Vivendi

Doodee

Just doing a bit o late night collage work and I came across this.
Its from megagames, so wheither or not its true, dont ask me, but here u go



Microsoft to Acquire Vivendi Games Thursday January 23, 2003
post a comment: 57 total


Description
Would XBox be considered more desirable if it had, exclusively, all Half-Life and Counter-Strike titles?

For some months now it has been known that the games division of the Vivendi empire, Vivendi Games, is struggling. As soon as it became apparent that the company is heading for a break-up, rumours of Microsoft interest begun to circulate. Other rumours of prospective buyers also surfaced but were soon dismissed. The only story that has persevered is that concerning a successful bid by Microsoft. A relevant announcement may appear before the end of this week.

The simple facts, even though far from being confirmed by official lips, point out that Microsoft are not going to let such an opportunity go by. Vivendi are selling and Microsoft are definitely buying. Many MS sources did claim that the Rare buyout was only the beginning, well Vivendi are certainly a step up.

The acquisition of a giant like Vivendi Games would give XBox an immense advantage. The game publishers arsenal includes titles such as : the Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo series of games from Blizzard. Other significant Vivendi licenses include Crash Bandicoot, Spyro the Dragon, the literary Lord of the Rings license, a wide array of Universal Pictures film rights and most importantly, Half-Life and Counter-Strike.

The implications of exclusive rights for the XBox for Half-Life and Counter-Strike would alone be enough to justify the buyout. Both titles have, highly anticipated, games in development, a Half-Life sequel is being prepared and Counter-Strike: Condition Zero is also on its way. Counter-Strike is also, by far, the most popular online game and would offer Microsoft a perfect tool for pushing its XBox Live service even further.

One point against such an acquisition might be the poor record of recent Vivendi games, with the thrashing of its LOTR title by EA's version during the holiday season, only too recent a memory. Such cases however, are more likely to have served as a negotiation advantage for Microsoft rather than a reason to miss such an opportunity.

Vivendi will not go cheap but if Microsoft do succeed in acquiring it, they will serve their XBox cause in two important ways. They will finally have extremely desirable titles, exclusively on their console and they will confirm their, all too frequent, comments about their dedication to making XBox the number 1 console.


I notice that the post date is 23rd, I havent check megagames in awhile so plz dont flame if its old news.

Shinji

Yes, and if Megagames had bothered copying the follow-up story on GI.biz rather than just ripping off the initial story, they'd also have the news that the Half-Life properties apparently wouldn't be part of any Vivendi deal because they belong entirely to Valve.

amp

Counter strike on the X-box. Surely one of the signs of the Apocalypse?

hmm

S Club Juniors and a re-formed Steps playing CS on an X-box using a token ring network..

*shudder*

That's so painful I almost forgot I want to smoke a cigarette really badly.

DeVore

porkage!

For some reason I want to see MS win the console war or at least start a decent fight as already we are seeing online console gaming emerging and price reductions aplenty. Hopefully games will fall in price too.

DeV.

Shinji

I don't think the price reductions are anything to do with MS - well, other than their own reductions, which were a desperate attempt to sell a few units of hardware

Obviously Live is pretty cool, and I hope that works out well. Be nice to see what Sony come up with too.

Software prices will not fall any faster than they're already falling. They're high because the companies need to subsidise the ludicrously cheap console hardware. You can't have it both ways

Doodee

Yea but the starcraft/warcraft franchise would well make up for not having the Half-life one.

What does this mean for Starcraft Ghost?

Matt Simis

Originally posted by Doodee
Yea but the starcraft/warcraft franchise would well make up for not having the Half-life one.

What does this mean for Starcraft Ghost?

SC: Ghost - aka, Splinter Cell 2525 AD

Wasnt it already PC and Xbox only?


On that topic, hopefully PC releases should be relatively unaffected buy Xbox-only licensing, much like GTA3 being on PS2 and PC. If that stays true, then buying Vivendi is a good move and I whole heartily support it!



Matt

Epitaph

Nope. It's been confirmed for the GameCube for quite a while now. IGN have been showing new screenshots whenever they're released (one at a time, for frigg's sake).

Praetorian

Microsoft: Acquisition mode enabled. Resistance is futile. You and all companies like you will be assimilated. You can not withstand the power of the big MS wallet.

Game companies can't resist Microsoft’s money. I hope other companies don't suffer the same fate. They really are not a good company to work for directly or indirectly.

Shinji

They really are not a good company to work for directly or indirectly.

That's utter horseshit. Whatever you happen to think of Microsoft's business practices, the fact is that they're consistently acknowledged as one of the best companies in the world to work for. You won't hear a single soul at Rare complaining about their treatment under Microsoft management, and the same goes for Bungie.

Praetorian

That's utter horse****.

LOL. Your choice of the word "horse****" is surprising!

Well I work for Microsoft indirectly. I deal with perhaps 200-250 companies. Of all of them Microsoft are the most intolerant, discourteous and poorly managed.

Two of my best friends work for Microsoft directly. Other than the pay and the other benefits they are "a terrible company to work for". "Management is ruthless and have extremely unrealistic expectations".

You won't hear a single soul at Rare complaining about their treatment under Microsoft management, and the same goes for Bungie.

Do you really think they would give out about their new employers? They are probably on twice as much money now than they ever were.

yellum

Aren't MS the people that encourage staff to work 80 hour weeks and pull all nighters and actually tell new recruits that they don't have problems if people sleep under their desks. While the money and stock options might be good pushing you to the grave is not a sign of a great company.

Hopefully their programming regime won't be pushed on the games companies where their staff spend more time creating Easter Eggs in the software than making bug free applications. The whole attitude of getting the application to demo mode and *almost* working and then just fix bits after that is shocking and of course it explains a lot...

Matt Simis

Originally posted by yellum
Aren't MS the people that encourage staff to work 80 hour weeks and pull all nighters and actually tell new recruits that they don't have problems if people sleep under their desks. While the money and stock options might be good pushing you to the grave is not a sign of a great company.

Honestly, that sounds like a load of industrial strength Urban Legend sh!te.

My contact with MS has always been quite good and from talking to their employees, they always seem to be a happy bunch with good benefits and treatment.



matt

yellum

I read this in a book about MS which was approved by MS, and the author thought it was a great thing. No Urban Legend Matt.

tHE vAGGABOND

> Aren't MS the people that encourage staff to work 80 hour weeks

ffs, get into the real world...

There is not a successful software company in the world who's staff dont work hard, Windows XP or Oracle or Championship Manager dont get made by people who work 9-5

Vagga (who has been at work all night!)

tHE vAGGABOND

"Two of my best friends work for Microsoft directly. Other than the pay and the other benefits they are "a terrible company to work for"

Every year there is a list published in fortune magazine of the best companies to work for, they go into big companies and confidentially survey employees and ask them questions about the company, their work and all the things that make happy and unhappy workers.

http://www.fortune.com/fortune/bestcompanies

Microsoft are 20th and are always on this list….


Lots of things could make your mates unhappy. I was pissed off in my last two jobs as I was working for great money in a job I hated, that does not make the company wonderful. The company trying to push workers to get the best from them does not make them bad. But we are all aware that one bad manager can make lots of people unhappy!

yellum

Originally posted by tHE vAGGABOND


ffs, get into the real world...

There is not a successful software company in the world who's staff dont work hard, Windows XP or Oracle or Championship Manager dont get made by people who work 9-5

Some of the best bugfree software is done by NASA. Its pretty critical that they get their code right. No all nighters for this lot. 9-5 all the way.

http://www.fastcompany.com/online/06/writestuff.html

Working sane hours surely means a healthier and clearer headed work force, who'll think and work better. All nighters only increase the risk of dodgy buggy code from creeping in.

tHE vAGGABOND

There are always one or two examples or good ways or bad ways or doing everything..

All I will say is that its a small bit different writing applications's\games for home computers (with any one of 20 sound cards and 20 graphics cards on any one of 6 OS's etc etc) in 20+ different languages than it is for one company with one program that runs on the same hardware every time in english

chernobyl

Originally posted by yellum
Some of the best bugfree software is done by NASA. Its pretty critical that they get their code right. No all nighters for this lot. 9-5 all the way.

Can you say "controlled environment"?

Kevok

This 'Microsoft is terrible to work for' is utterly crap.

If you want to bitch about a company aquiring devs/publishers and then making a pig's dinner out of them, bitch about EA. They swallow companies whole, push them, squeeze every penny out till there isn't a creative spark left in them, then consolidate to try and reignite that spark.

Bullfrog and now, regrettably, Westwood have been closed along with EA Vegas, and both are being consolidated into EA Los Angeles i believe.

I pray to God that the piece about EA/Nintendo in GI.biz is baseless crap, because given the hit that Nintendos stock took when EA said it was 'concerned' about Nintendo's future...it's not as unbelievable as it may seem.

Doodee

Aren't MS the people that encourage staff to work 80 hour weeks and pull all nighters and actually tell new recruits that they don't have problems if people sleep under their desks. While the money and stock options might be good pushing you to the grave is not a sign of a great company.

I have slept about 2 days this week, the rest of my time is spent researching for our end of year project for my game dev course,

I doubt u can actually make ppl work longer than they wish, its up to the person.

Shinji

I pray to God that the piece about EA/Nintendo in GI.biz is baseless crap

It's not baseless crap. Honestly, would I write baseless crap?

It is however very, very unlikely to happen. It's just a rumour that a source at a Japanese investment bank told me about, which is apparently a pretty popular story to tell in Sake bars in Shinjuku after the close of business on the Nikkei these days... It's based on some pretty solid financial reasoning, but everyone acknowledges that it's an extremely radical rumour nonetheless.

tHE vAGGABOND

I hate EA as much as the next fella...

But you can only look at the game charts and see that they must be doing something right as they 0wn the game sales charts..

I also have to wonder about Westwood (who became EA Vegas) did the bright sparks who made C+C take the money and then sit back; as they did nothing worth talking about for a good long while afterward..

monument

EA really are doing a lot of things right, they are one of few publishers who see Ireland as Ireland and not just a part of the UK.

This next line is going to make me sound a bit like I love EA (I’m not biased, editorially at least)

It slightly might be a good thing if the EA/Nintendo thing did happen, as Nintendo currently treats Europe like s.hit.

KdjaCL

Originally posted by monument
EA really are doing a lot of things right, they are one of few publishers who see Ireland as Ireland and not just a part of the UK.

This next line is going to make me sound a bit like I love EA (I’m not biased, editorially at least)

It slightly might be a good thing if the EA/Nintendo thing did happen, as Nintendo currently treats Europe like s.hit.

Install EA game ,it goes tits up and gives an error most of their ****e does ,i know i`ll register and get free tech support.
I look at the address and see UK UK UK or UK

Yes they do see ireland as Ireland.
:rolleyes:
My personal fav is when patching mohaa is asks for the CD then says "could not find mohaa installed on your PC"

kdjac

Mark

I believe this is worthy of a "mmmmmmmmm" anyweh.
Tbh HL2 and TF2 are seriously starting to lose my interest (JUST RELEASE ONE DAMN PICTURE,VIDEO, ANYTHING!!) although I do love Blizzard.
Nonetheless I like the latter for their pc games, and as Shinji said, should Microsoft buy them,their presence on the pc is (thankfully) unlikely to change. Still as a Nintendo fan Im worried

Mmmmmmmmmm

Doodee

I doubt you'll get any pics/video/anything of HL2 or TF2 until all this vivendi stuff is sorted out.
then again, i could be wrong.

monument

Originally posted by KdjaC
Install EA game ,it goes tits up and gives an error most of their ****e does ,i know i`ll register and get free tech support.
I look at the address and see UK UK UK or UK

Yes they do see ireland as Ireland.
:rolleyes:

In PR, retail and marketing terms they do see Ireland as Ireland.

I think EA’s European tech support is based in the UK, as many companies use Ireland in the same way.

I not saying EA are brilliant and we should all love them, however they are doing more in Ireland then most publishers.

Kevok

Please, EA are catering for the lowest common denominator. I can't remember the last original, AAA game that came from EA. (thats the in house not satelites).

They are franchise whores through and through. And although Nintendo can be accused of the same thing, at least something fresh comes from them once or twice a year.

Shinji, I didn't mean to imply that you were lying, as i said, I hoped. Even I can see the power EA holds over the gaming industry, it would only take a few choice words for them to send Nintendos stock plummeting, until its ripe for a buyout. Ruthless, but thats business.

monument

Originally posted by Kevok
Please, EA are catering for the lowest common denominator. I can't remember the last original, AAA game that came from EA. (thats the in house not satelites).

thats why I said...
"I not saying EA are brilliant and we should all love them"

monument

Originally posted by Kevok
Please, EA are catering for the lowest common denominator. I can't remember the last original, AAA game that came from EA. (thats the in house not satelites).

MOH?