Microsoft is a stone's throw away from finalizing a deal for the purchase of Activision Blizzard. The deal sees Microsoft picking up the Call of Duty and Candy Crush developer for a staggering $68.7 billion (USD). Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer spilled the beans in a new posting at the Xbox Wire earlier today.
This deal seems to have been made at the "perfect" time, at least for Microsoft. Activision Blizzard's valuation was probably at its lowest in years thanks to the ongoing legal battles and investigations it's facing due to all of that sexual misconduct and discrimination.
As part of today's announcement, Spencer says that they are "on a mission to extend the joy and community of gaming to everyone on the planet." With today's acquisition, Microsoft now owns Activision Publishing, Blizzard Entertainment, Beenox, Demonware, Digital Legends, High Moon Studios, Infinity Ward, King, Major League Gaming, Radical Entertainment, Raven Software, Sledgehammer Games, Toys for Bob, Treyarch, and every other team big and small across Activision Blizzard.
Microsoft says that for the short-term Activision Blizzard and Microsoft Gaming will continue to operate independently. However, once the deal is fully finalized, Activision Blizzard will report to Phil Spencer and Microsoft Gaming.
As expected, the deal will bring many Activision Blizzard games to Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass. There will be "both new titles and games from Activision Blizzard's incredible catalog" offered. The newest Call of Duty titles appearing day 1 on Game Pass sounds kind of nuts but that has a very, very real possibility of happening.
Speaking of Call of Duty, there is no saying right now how this deal will impact the appearance of Call of Duty on other platforms like PlayStation. I would have to assume that there are some existing deals in place with Sony that may result in the next game or two in the series coming out on PlayStation, but beyond that? Well, who knows?
There is also no word on if Microsoft has any plans to bring Activision Blizzard titles to other platforms on PC, such as Steam. For the past few years, Activision Blizzard titles on PC have been exclusive to the Battle.net Desktop App.
Then there is the elephant in the room: Bobby Kotick. The current CEO of Activision Blizzard will reportedly stay on as CEO of Activision Blizzard at least during the transition phase. Whether or not he stays with the company in any capacity following the end of that phase has not yet been made clear. A statement released to Axios' Stephen Totilo states the following:
"Bobby will lead [AB] as CEO, as he has for the last 30 years. Together, Bobby and Phil will work together to ensure the transition to this exciting new combined enterprise. The Activision Blizzard business will report to Phil after the close"
MS have been performing well, Halo Infinite took time but came out decent that could have been much worse, they weren't involved for most of Psychonauts 2's development but that was fantastic, they remastered all of Age of Empires and made a new one which is apparently good, they made a new Flight Simulator using all the budget and technology possible, i'm still playing it, i still can't believe they did that, Forza Horizon 5 was great, put out the sequel to Ori, people love Game Pass, they picked up a ton of studios we don't even know what they're working on besides a new Perfect Dark, they're actually kind of killing it.
I don't have any qualms with this takeover, Activision and Blizzard were the most depressing thing in this industry.