Curtain Call: Microsoft, Activsion Blizzard Announce Completion Of Acquisition
from the and-scene dept
It is a deal that has been two years in the making, but Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard has been completed. If you haven’t followed along for the full play by play of this saga, you can go back and look at all the posts we’ve done on the topic. But the primer on this is that Microsoft announced it was pursuing the deal, then it faced 3 supposedly serious regulatory challenges from America, the UK, and the EU. One by one those challenges fell away, through a combination of deals Microsoft inked with other non-Microsoft platforms to keep some major franchises non-Microsoft exclusive for 10 years and some rather absurd focus being put on cloud-gaming competition instead of the wider gaming market. Eventually, all that remained was a last okay from the UK’s CME, which Microsoft subsequently got.
The video game industry just got a lot smaller. The long and winding saga of Microsoft’s $69 billion purchase of Activision Blizzard has finally come to a close with the companies announcing the completed merger today following one last greenlight from regulators in the UK. Call of Duty is now part of Xbox and the tech giant has now surpassed Sony as the second biggest gaming company in the world, as gaming’s big march toward corporate consolidation continues.
In addition to the blockbuster military shooter, Activision Blizzard produces Overwatch 2, Diablo IV, and World of Warcraft. The acquisition will provide a raft of big games for Microsoft’s growing Xbox Game Pass subscription service, as well as make it a massive player on mobile with some of the biggest smartphone games in the world in Candy Crush and Call of Duty mobile. Microsoft signed a 10-year deal to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation, but has reserved the right to make other Activision Blizzard franchises exclusive to its Xbox platforms going forward.
And as Microsoft has made very clear through actions it took during the regulatory fight, Microsoft absolutely is going to bring a whole bunch of franchises, some of which have been around for years, to Microsoft exclusively. This is as it gobbles up several major gaming franchises combined with adding in at least 10,000 employees, at least until some of those from the acquired companies can be culled.
And so this deal is complete, though delayed from its original intended completion date.
Microsoft and Activision Blizzard had originally planned to close the deal by last July, but battles with regulators in the UK and U.S. almost killed it off. The Federal Trade Commission attempted to block the merger in federal court over the summer, leading to a week-long trial that ended up revealing an unprecedented amount of behind-the-scenes info about Xbox, Sony, and other gaming companies, including leaked plans for upcoming consoles and private emails between top brass.
And that’s about as much good as came out of the FTC’s suit. And the other regulatory action as well, for that matter.
And, as the Kotaku article noted at its opening, the gaming industry just got smaller.
Filed Under: cme, competition, ftc, video games
Companies: activision blizzard, microsoft
Comments on “Curtain Call: Microsoft, Activsion Blizzard Announce Completion Of Acquisition”
Congratulations, society. You just failed to stop yet another mega-merger. I am utterly disappointed in you.
'The scorpion did what? Nooo, how could we have seen that coming?'
I hope the regulators who gave the greenlight are practicing their ‘shocked and/or surprised’ faces in the mirror for when it turns out that despite claims to the contrary MS will absolutely be making a number of the games exclusive to their own console/platform, I’d hate to think of the muscles they might strain having to come up with those expression on the spot a few years down the line should they not practice beforehand.
Well, they did bought Skype, and did nothing with it (except pushing it to every Microsoft product), since people didn’t care about it. No Skype is near dead.
They bought Minecraft, and didn’t change anything (except asking all users to create a Microsoft account to access it, just like is mostly mandatory in Windows 11).
They bought a fair share of Nokia, with pretty much the same result.
I probably could go on on what Microsoft can actually do with so much money, and would never do.
I’m not that pessimistic about Microsoft’s Activision. Starcraft and World of Warcaft is exclusively played on Windows, Diablo and Overwatch if mainly played on it. Making theses games (the main Activition games) exclusive won’t change a lot. And Microsoft being Microsoft, it won’t change a thing about theses games.
And for CoD, ten years is a lot, and even if war games are still “hot” (and will continue at least as long as wars a part of daily news), there could be new game licenses (like “Battlefield”, even they didn’t released a game each year, and none since 3 years), even a different type of game (the fact that CoD hasn’t changed in 20 years doesn’t mean it will still be what gamers want in few years).
Now Microsoft sees Windows part declining, small market share in web browsers, has no visibility in mobile (except now with Candy Crush) and pretty in debt (because of massing cost of OpenAI and Azure) with it’s AI war it seems to loose.
My humble take on it, anything won’t change a lot (expect many more layoffs) for the next ten years. Then Microsoft will realize it’s too late to build a monopoly in game industry, and let Activision dying…
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I wouldn’t be so quick to write their obituary. Microsoft will probably let Activision continue to do their thing, and continue to be successful. Even if cloud gaming does take off, Activision is profitable into itself. The debt Microsoft took on for AI won’t cripple them, even though it’s a bandwagon gimmick. I personally don’t think cloud gaming or AI will be good investments in the long run, but their core business isn’t going anywhere
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True.
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Eh, not quite true on the Minecraft side of things… there just a fair bit more nuance in the things they have done.
Like adding player reporting to Java, which made a lot of people angry cause all non-realm servers are run by players or entities with otherwise no association with Mojang.
It was also in blatant disregard of the fact that there is ongoing hostility between the playerbases of Java and Bedrock (with Java tending to have more older users), and said change was to align Java to be closer to bedrock.
Also, the method for reporting is buggy/flawed.
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While I agree to an extent, you seem focussed mainly on the non-gaming parts of Microsoft and not on the market they’re going for.
That part has actually done well from a consumer perspective. Since the disastrous XBox One launch, they’ve done a lot to set up everything from backward compatibility (which they explicitly said they wouldn’t do before) to allowing people to play XBox games on mobile and non-Windows PCs.
I get the concerns, but while one can play Starfield without owning a device with a Microsoft OS, while Sony have explicit agreements not to port some games to XBox and offer no way to play most of their first party titles on non-Sony devices, I don’t share them.
We’ll see how this plays out long-term, but AI and Skype/Teams/whatever are different business units and the stated goal is not to just sell more consoles.
Absolutely baffling picks from the various regulatory bodies when it came to the hills they died on in this case. All the genuine arguments to raise and concerns they could have demanded be addressed, and it all came down to “Sony can’t make a successful FPS” and “Cloud gaming is 100% pinkie swear the future¹”
¹ the future is not available in the US for as long as ISP monopolies retain their regulatory capture that defines “broadband” as anything in excess of a 9.6k modem
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Not really. They agreed to sell off their cloud rights, and the majority of properties they bought didn’t have anything to do with FPS. if you fell for those arguments, you’re listening to the company whose strategy is blocking developers from offering cross-platform titles and not allowing others to use their. cloud platforms.
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“in the US”
Oh, and the fact that the UK regulator was the last place to fall in place should be a clue as to why this isn’t the bigger issue.
I’m betting that the $20.00 a month fee (the multiple month subscriptions aren’t much better value wise) we pay here in Australia for WoW doesn’t go down any time soon. What are the odds that we’ll be forced to go over to Xbox Game Pass to play in the future?
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I’d say there’s an approximately 0 chance of that happening. Forcing WOW onto consoles makes little sense. The game isn’t designed for it and finding new players on console after giving up many of the PC players is likely not worth the effort.
On the other hand, I could see adding it to PC Gamepass which could have benefits of bringing new players to the game, but then you’d be dealing with people not invested so trade-offs.
Great news for
Owners of PC
Owners of Mac
Owners of Xbox
Owners of Switch
You can come back and complain if ANY game becomes Xbox exclusive.
I don’t see Microsoft doing that.
As the NYT points out: most gamers are excited. Despite what anti-big-tech media and Sony owners think.
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Yeah, when has industry consolidation ever hurt the consumer? And when have people ever been mistakenly excited about something that does not actually benefit them? Surely now everything will be awesome forever.
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So, do you own a Sony system,’or are you anti “big tech”?
(Both?)
Because 3 platforms just gained Cross compatible futures.