Microsoft, the Tech Giants member, dropped the biggest news in the gaming community with its purchase of the game publishing giant, Activision-Blizzard. What is the value of this deal? Will all the games of Activision-Blizzard be exclusive to the Xbox consoles? When will this deal be complete? Welcome to this blog, where we will discuss everything related to this big news, so scroll down and find out. Microsoft is a tech giant which dates back to 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen. The company rose to prominence in the mid-80s when it launched MS-DOS later Microsoft Windows. The company entered the Gaming industry in 1999.
In 2000, Microsoft created a new subdivision for gaming, Microsoft Games, and publicly announced the first generation of Xbox Console. The first major studio acquisition was Bungie, the developer behind the Halo series. Halo: Combat Evolved launched with the Xbox console as a launch title. The company did not stop here, it purchased and established many new companies for their gaming lineups and Xbox consoles. Microsoft then renamed its gaming branch to Microsoft Studios in 2011 and Xbox Game Studios in 2019. Microsoft gaming branch CEO is Phil Spencer. In 2021, Xbox Game Studios purchased Zenimax Media, the company behind Elder Scroll, Doom, Fallout, and many more games, for a whopping amount of $7.5 billion. Xbox Game studios has now multiple internal studios. Some prominent studios are Bethesda Game Studios, Rare Limited, 343 industries, Playground Games, Obsidian Entertainment, Ninja Theory, Arkane Studios, Tango Gameworks, id Software, MachineGames, etc.
Activision-Blizzard
Activision-Blizzard is a holding company that owns Activision, Blizzard, King, and Major League Gaming. It is the largest gaming company in Europe and America by revenue and market capitalization. The company’s revenue was over eight billion dollars in 2020.
Activision-Blizzard is most notable for:
- Call of Duty Series
- Tony Hawk Series
- Crash Bandicoot Series
- Overwatch Series
- Diablo Series
- Warcraft Series
- Starcraft Series
- Hearthstone
In 2021 the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing sued Activision-Blizzard for sexual harassment and employee discrimination. These allegations led to an investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. This led to the exit of many big figures of the Activision-Blizzard, cancellation of many events, worker’s walkout for better treatments, etc.
In January 2021, the Tech giant Microsoft announced that it would acquire Activision-Blizzard for a whopping $69 billion. Every company under Activision-Blizzard will be under Phil Spencers’, CEO of Microsoft Gaming, umbrella.
Microsoft Acquires Activision-Blizzard.
One of the companies in Tech Giants, Microsoft, is acquiring the troubled yet successful gaming publisher in the world, Activision. Activision is known for some of the most successful games in the world, like Call of Duty, Overwatch, Diablo, and many more.
Today is a historic moment. We are excited to announce that the world-renowned franchises and talented people at @ATVI_AB will be joining Team Xbox!
Full announcement details here: https://t.co/RwF0QgXVwE pic.twitter.com/jIXuYCcndG
— Xbox (@Xbox) January 18, 2022
With acquiring Activision, Microsoft will own Activision, Blizzard Entertainment, King, Major League Gaming – an esports organization. The deal for the acquisition is of the approximate value of $69 billion. The Microsoft Activision deal is now the biggest purchase in the Tech as well as the Gaming industry. The biggest Tech industry purchase was Dell acquiring EMC in 2016, with a value of $67 billion. In the Gaming industry biggest deal was the Take-Two acquiring Zynga in 2021 with a value of $12.7 billion. Microsoft will be behind Tencent and Sony as the third-largest gaming company by revenue in the world once this deal completes.
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After The Deal Closure.
After the closure of the deal, Microsoft has promised to add Activison’s many games on Xbox Game Pass. All the games, including World of Warcraft, Call of Duty, Diablo, Overwatch, and many more, will most likely come to the Xbox Game Pass, along with all new games and titles from Activision. Microsoft has also said that they will not pull many of the franchise from its competitor, Sony, console but will have some part of the content exclusive to the Xbox.
Xbox Game Studios also announced that the Game Pass service is now 25 million subscribers strong.
With this deal, Microsoft will have to shoulder and solve all the misconduct going on in Activision Blizzard. The company has not yet put out how it will deal with all the stuff regarding the troubled publisher. But many sources have claimed that after the deal, when Activision is under the umbrella of Microsoft, Bobby Kotick, the current CEO of Activision Blizzard will quit. All the companies will report directly to Phil Spencer, CEO of Microsoft Gaming.
The Microsoft-Activision deal will be complete and close by July 2023.
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