Cowen reduced its rating for Activision Blizzard shares to market perform from outperform...

>Cowen reduced its rating for Activision Blizzard shares to market perform from outperform, citing the risk its new esports league will do worse than expected.

>This is the firm's first downgrade of the video game maker in nine years, according to its analyst. Activision Blizzard shares have risen more than 600 percent since the end of 2008 through Friday versus the S&P 500's 182 percent return.

>"We remain confident about the trajectory of Activision's core business, with Call of Duty likely to rebound this year and Black Ops 4 likely due for release next year. However, we have a significant bit of nervousness around the debut of Overwatch League," analyst Doug Creutz wrote in a note to clients Monday.

>The analyst said a significant portion of Activision Blizzard's valuation premium versus its industry peers is "based on investor optimism around the potential for esports to be a large profit generator in the future."

>The company's vaunted Overwatch esports league is slated to launch on Dec. 6 with 12 teams. "As this is the first time a publisher has ever attempted to launch a major esport from scratch, we expect OWL 1.0 to be a learning experience, and thus believe that the probability of reality failing to meet investor expectations is relatively high," he wrote.

>Activision Blizzard and Take-Two shares are up 75 percent and 118 percent respectively year to date through Friday compared with the S&P 500's 14 percent return. The analyst reiterated his $66 price target for Activision Blizzard shares, representing 4 percent upside to Friday's close.

This is what happens when you make a game and go "you are esport now"

We did it Sup Forums
We killed WoW

>they're going to market even harder
allah save me

Overwatch is dead, let it go.

The only thing keeping it relevant are lootboxes.

More like Animewatchers and Blizzard severely overestimated Overwatch's viability as a esport title.

It's not great to play and it sure as hell isn't fun to watch.

tldr?

cowen?? the literally who of wall street?

Can anyone explain to me why all devs are now so horny for le e-sport? Is it that profitable or just a fad that is trendy atm?

It is profitable and not a trend.
esports has been around since the early 00s if not even the late 90s, just not on the same scale and it wasn't called esports back then.

it's an easy sell to dumb investors who think the ROI is insane

>tldr?
ESPORTS LUL

Does this mean we can finally have OW matches that aren't 6v6 but 12v12, thus making for more exciting games and legitimizing "useless" classes?

I don't even know why investors and famous people invested into overwatch when fucking halo was getting more viewers than ow last year and then of course fighting games still have more viewers as well

>blizzards 3rd attempt at getting into esports is going to be another failure

they deserve it

Esports is a cheaper, more effective way of marketing. And a lot of the time the developer company/publisher itself doesn't even have to get involved in the process.

overwatch is more advertiser friendly

They banned Dafran and that shit was extremely bad for the casual competitive scene. CodeySombra quit because of the cuckrat meta. Harbleu was out of the light because of the hog nerf. Galeadelade with Ana's nerfs. Steveo with Sym got a ban. Taimou got supressed by dive, he's fine now but that really took a toll on his popularity during S5. Same with Kephrii, Cloneman. Stanky fucking quit because of the retard balance schedules.

You know who's left? xqc who nobody likes because he's "toxic." Seagull. a bunch of koreans no one has heard of besides ryujehong, carpe, and effect. And the fucking mercy main that controls 16% of the fanbase because he cries about nerfs.

By the time everyone bought this game around the anniversary to get good like the #1's they nerfed their playstyles and made the no skill dive comp bullshit meta where everyone stopped playing because it was absolute fucking cancer. Dive was the worst shit ever even after the reaper buffs.

This game does not deserve to succeed in esports at all

They got sooooo cocky during uprising after they let the public know they made a billion off ow and they dropped the ball, several, several times now

Because it's manufactured interest. Blizzard is a multi-billion dollar company built on hype, do you think they'd have trouble convincing a couple of people who know nothing about videogames to invest in their hype machine with "MAA444D RETURNZ"?

They're awfully cocky, though, to the point where I'm convinced they'll have some kind of viewer bot scheme running on Twitch during the Tournament, because there's absolutely no way a videogame that has on average >10k viewers will pull enough of an audience to justify the bloated investment.

>I'm convinced they'll have some kind of viewer bot scheme running on Twitch during the Tournament, because there's absolutely no way a videogame that has on average >10k viewers will pull enough of an audience to justify the bloated investment.
......you know you actually might be right

>competitive overwatch
hahahahah HAHAHAHAHA

>we expect OWL 1.0 to be a learning experience, and thus believe that the probability of reality failing to meet investor expectations is relatively high," he wrote.
That's what you get for disbanding Rogue, recruiting your buddies instead of real talent, and not having any promotion for it at all. Good job Blizzcuck.

overwatch is the least competitive multiplayer shooter I've ever played

>>competitive overwatch
You know it's bad when they had to integrate cosmetics with teams because that's the only thing people care about in this game

>overwatch is the least competitive multiplayer videogame I've ever played
I have no doubt that a slightly moded FF1 would have as much competitive potential as Overwatch. Overwatch is fucking unwatchable.

There is a huge issue with competitive overwatch, and this was the sole reason it has failed.

1. The game has a predecessor with a similar playstyle and a long competitive life (though not a healthy one). There has been several dozens of people who were at the "pro level" in that game.

2. However people from #1 have made at least 50% of the top500 players (i.e. the pro level players). The other 50%, and also the weaker players, have a skill gap so huge it's measured in years.

There is basically a group of people which has not changed much and is mostly composed of former tf2 pro-level players and csgo pro-level players (smaller part) and THE REST of the HIGH LEVEL player base is like years behind of them.

This issue makes the ladder unplayable for those weaker players because of the skill gap, and it makes it unplayable to those pro players because of the skill gap (they have to practice scrims because ladder is a waste of time basically).

And... blizzard decided to "go esport" with that kind of situation.
Sponsors are not interested because the "top level" pool of players is very small.
Players get no chance (except for talented ones) because of the existing skill gap.
The esport scene is dead.

If the game had no predecessor with a similar playstyle, their approach might have been way more successful.

ESPORTS COMPETITIVE WAR MODE FROM THE NEW CALL OF DUTY WHEN???

Aren't the top Overwatch players all Korean, though? I thought the issue was that classic shooter skills like aiming, dodging, positioning, flanking, etc. matter way less in Overwatch than they do in TF2 or Quake and that's why teams that would have poor luck in, say, Counter-Strike can do incredibly well in Overwatch.

The way I see it: it's a shooter made for people who dislike shooters.

I was mostly commenting on the western esport scene because that's where they push the esport the hardest.
I think the asian esport scene should be fine. It was proven by sc1 that the korean esport can withstand any ingame defects if it's hyped enough.

Asia is literally fine right now when it comes to the esports aspect. APEX will always do fine. Go watch Lunatic Hai vs Runaway, shit is fucking wild. Now that's quality. Crazy fucking Doomfists, wild Tracer ultimates being thrown, extremely precise dva ults. So god damn amazing.

What do we have in NA? Kungarna being stomped by Rogue during contenders because Rogue had a Junkrat + Babybay wasnt there to carry them. Fucking sad.

>Overwatch is dead!
When will this meme stop?

>PC game 1kk
>PC+PS+XB game 1kk
>PC game 500k

???

cheaper marketing, more control of the online infastructure to keep people playing which means more oppurunties to sell them lootboxes

If you put so much credence in reddit maybe you should stay there.

This.

NA is just ass.

who else BUY THE DIP here

>Blizzard could have been in the forefront of e-sports with Brood War
>Lets SC2 get to the point of irrelevancy
>Dota 2 and League have huge million dollar tourneys
>EVO plays on ESPN
>Blizzard: "Wait a minute! We have esports too!"
Good luck playing catch up, idiots.

BW has always been nothing everywhere besides korea. If you're a BW fanboi thinking it had the esport "in its prime" then you better do a fucking research beforehand.

Blizzard has never had decent esport on the west. Not with a single game (dota1 aside). All their games were nothing on the west. Some of them, notably BW and wc3, has been successful in asia. But it doesn't change the situation on the west.