If Microsoft’s acquisition of Bethesda last year put the cat among the pigeons, the breaking news from this week saw that cat dragging a turkey to the floor. Activision Blizzard is set to become a part of Xbox, and it’s a news story that has fed countless news stories, interviews and speculative pieces over the past week.

In the News This Week

Let’s dive in with all of the stories surrounding Activision Blizzard this past week. There’s been a lot:

Expect that collection of stories to keep on rumbling over the coming weeks and months, but let’s not overlook the rest of the industry:

Games in Review and Featured Articles

Through the rest of our coverage, we had the first meaningful crop of game releases this week.

You might also consider my early impressions of Rainbow Six Extraction a review in progress, though the baton will be passing on to Jim for the scored review coming next week.

Not wanting to be left out, I got my rampant speculation hat on to talk through why Microsoft has decided to splash such a huge amount of cash on Activision Blizzard and what the acquisition likely means for gamers. Will COD be going exclusive in a few years? Will Kotick be on the way out? What’s going to happen with Blizzard?

Over on the preview side of things, I had a rather busy week, checking out the stylish new twist on OlliOlli World. I also delivered not one, but two previews for Total War Warhammer 3, diving into the main campaigns for both the newly announced Daemons of Chaos and the Grand Cathay faction.

Meanwhile, Dom caught up with the Frontier team to talk Planet Zoo and Sam joined us this week to see if Ring Fit Adventure could help them run a fast 5K.

Finally, we had What We Played, featuring Windjammers 2, Horizon Zero Dawn and Rainbow Six Extraction.

Trailer Park

Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga gameplay overview

Splitgate Season 1 content revealed

Meet the cast of Horizon Forbidden West in this new video

The Cuphead Show! streams onto Netflix in February

Your Achievements

And finally for this round-up, we come to… you!

• A happy 40th to doomsday619, who’s been spoilt by his wife with an Xbox Series S, letting him dive into Halo Infinite, Forza Horizon 5, Lake, Psychonauts, Tell Me Why and Rainbow Six Extraction. Meanwhile, on PS5 he played a bit of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and got in a few games of Mario Party Superstars on Switch with his wife.
• hornet1990 got back into Mass Effect Andromeda… only to have 3 hours of progress wiped out by a door glitch… Ouch.
• MrYd got in plenty of Deep Rock Galactic, finished off Ghost of Tsushima with the platinum and a run through the Iki Island story, and then decided to go all masochistic by buying Snowrunner in the sale.
• KippDynamite recently replayed Horizon Zero Dawn and thought that the gameplay held up rather well.

That’s it for this week’s gaming round-up. Have a fun weekend, wrap up warm, and we’ll catch you again next week.

Source: https://www.thesixthaxis.com/2022/01/22/something-for-the-weekend-22-01-22/