In news that’s shocking but not entirely unfounded, Microsoft has announced an acquisition of Activision Blizzard for the whopping sum of $68.7 billion. The publisher behind the likes of Call of Duty, Candy Crush Saga, Overwatch, World of Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo, will now be in Microsoft’s kitty and the company has already said that it plans to add games from these franchises to Xbox Game Pass once the deal closes.
The metaverse is also a topic of discussion here, even as Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has said, “Gaming is the most dynamic and exciting category in entertainment across all platforms today and will play a key role in the development of metaverse platforms.” However, no plans regarding this matter have been revealed as yet.
The other topic of discussion is Activision’s handling of sexual-assault allegations within the company. For now, it seems that embattled CEO Bobby Kotick will stay on as company head until the deal closes. But that’s going to take some time, as Microsoft predicts that formalities won’t be over until the fiscal year 2023.
The other big question is about exclusivity. With Microsoft now the publisher of Activision Blizzard games, will they even show up on PlayStation consoles? Having huge franchises like Call of Duty and Overwatch becoming Xbox exclusives won’t be a good move, since PlayStation players account for a large chunk of their sales numbers.
This deal comes around a year after Microsoft made another shocking announcement of buying Bethesda’s parent company, Zenimax Media for $7.5 billion. Regarding platform exclusivity, the company had said at that time that games like The Elder Scrolls 6 will launch on Xbox, PC, and “other consoles on a case-by-case basis.” So there’s still hope for PlayStation fans.
As we said, the deal between Activision Blizzard and Microsoft is expected to close in 2023. We’ll have more on it when additional details are out.