It’s official. Microsoft just bought Activision Blizzard. How much did they pay, you ask? A huge $68.7 billion. To put that into perspective, when Microsoft bought Bethesda not so long ago, they paid a now measly $7.5 billion. This also comes freshly off recent acquisitions that ‘trumped’ the Bethesda deal with Take-Two Interactive (they own Rockstar)’s acquisition of Zynga for $12.7 billion. However, the deal still needs to go through all legal avenues and won’t be finalised until 2023.
Once the deal closes, Microsoft will end up owning much loved (typically PlayStation) franchises like Crash Bandicoot and Spyro and there are calls for concern for these communities, however, given Microsoft’s track record of releasing games on PC and through their cloud services, there should be workarounds (and maybe the rumoured Xbox TV stick can help with that).
The most notable Xbox gain here though is certainly Call of Duty, arguably one of the biggest gaming franchises in existence. But don’t worry just yet- Phil Spencer, head of Xbox has laid claims that he intends to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation. Yeah, it’s not too clear and he probably has to keep quiet due to legal reasons. Sony have indicated though that they have existing agreements with Activision and Xbox has agreed to honour them, for the time being.
In total, Microsoft will end up acquiring Blizzard Entertainment, King, Radical Entertainment, Treyarch, Raven, High Moon, Beenox, SledgeHammer Games, Infinity Ward, Demonware, Toys For Bob, Activision Shanghai, Solid State Studios and Digital Legends. Xbox Game Studios will then go from 23 studios to 34. This means more exclusives and more importantly, more Game Pass games. This also means Xbox will own Candy Crush, Crash Bandicoot, Diablo, Guitar Hero, Hearthstone, Overwatch, Skylanders, Spyro, StarCraft, World of Warcraft, Warcraft and more unused properties. There will no doubt be plenty of announcements to come in the next year; hopefully, this includes a new Guitar Hero and the departure of troubled Activision CEO Bobby Kotick.
How do the competition respond, then? Well as I write this piece, PlayStation have just announced they are acquiring Bungie, the original creators of Halo and Destiny for $3.6 billion. Although, this acquisition seems to suggest all of Bungie’s work will remain on multiple platforms, including future titles (maybe PlayStation will receive exclusive content). PlayStation fans are also seemingly calling for Sony to do more and acquire Square Enix (behind Hitman, Deus Ex, and Tomb Raider), Capcom (produce Dead Rising and Street Fighter) and Bandai Namco (Tekken). Nonetheless, it’ll be interesting to see how PlayStation respond, maybe by even launching their own, already-rumoured, Game Pass type service so they can begin to cut through Xbox’s current acquisition streak – I’d certainly welcome it.