Microsoft has announced their intention to acquire Activision Blizzard King in a deal that values the monolithic publisher at $68.7 billion. This, Microsoft states, will help to ‘provide building blocks for the metaverse’, and is expected to be approved by regulators in FY23, which runs from July 2022 to end of June 2023 for Microsoft. Activision Blizzard is the third largest video games company in how much revenue they draw in, behind only Sony and Tencent, thanks to their vastly popular and successful franchises like Call of Duty, Candy Crush and Warcraft, Diablo and Overwatch. They also have a sizeable position in esports, thanks to owning Major League Gaming, which hosts popular Call of Duty and Overwatch competitions. This leaves massive questions over what the future of video games looks like. With Microsoft’s acquisition of Bethesda for $7.5 billion in early 2021, ones of the biggest concerns was that all of Bethesda’s future games would become Xbox exclusives, a fear that turned out to be warranted. However, nothing that Bethesda produces has the reach and pervasiveness of Call of Duty or Candy Crush – not even Skyrim. Will Microsoft be content to keep the next Call of Duty game as a cross-platform release? Will COD Warzone remain on PlayStation while Modern Warfare 2 becomes an Xbox exclusive? We simply do not know right now, but this is a huge deal. Activision Blizzard comes with a significant stigma right now. The company is embattled on multiple fronts with lawsuits and government investigations into the workplace culture, as well as employees who are striking while also preparing to unionise. This has drawn stern criticism from the leaders of Xbox, PlayStation and Nintendo, so with that in mind, Microsoft acquiring the company could be a huge step forward in cleansing it of its unsavoury whiff. That certainly seems to be the implication. While the deal works its way through anti-trust regulators, Bobby Kotick will remain as CEO of Activision Blizzard. However, “Once the deal closes, the Activision Blizzard business will report to Phil Spencer, CEO, Microsoft Gaming.” This certainly implies that the man who allegedly knew of the allegations running through his company for years will be hanging around for the transition period and then sail off into the sunset. Just last week, Spencer said that he doesn’t believe it’s his job “to punish other companies” like Activision Blizzard for such misdeeds, though now that Activision will be part of his company, he needs to ensure that they are squeaky clean. In the here and now, Spencer said, “Players everywhere love Activision Blizzard games, and we believe the creative teams have their best work in front of them. Together we will build a future where people can play the games they want, virtually anywhere they want.” “For more than 30 years our incredibly talented teams have created some of the most successful games,” Kotick said. “The combination of Activision Blizzard’s world-class talent and extraordinary franchises with Microsoft’s technology, distribution, access to talent, ambitious vision and shared commitment to gaming and inclusion will help ensure our continued success in an increasingly competitive industry.” Considering the size of this deal, you can expect that it will draw much greater scrutiny from legislative bodies over the next few months. While the Bethesda purchase was waved through, this is much more significant and will have a higher barrier for success. Source: Microsoft
Microsoft has agreed to acquire publisher Activision Blizzard, the technology giant has announced. The deal is valued at $68.7bn (~£50.5bn), according to a report by Reuters. RELATED: Blizzard President J. Allen Brack steps down Microsoft has announced that both entities will continue to operate independently until the transaction closes. A company-wide email posted on the Activision […]
Microsoft has agreed to acquire Activision Blizzard in "an all-cash transaction valued at $68.7 billion". If approved, the deal would give 'Team Xbox' full ownership of iconic IPs such as Call of Duty, Warcraft, Diablo, and many more, and grow its head count by almost 10,000. The story first broke at the Wall Street Journal and was followed by a corroboration at Bloomberg's The Terminal. Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer has since confirmed the acquisition himself on the Xbox Blog. "It is incredibly exciting to announce that Microsoft has agreed to acquire Activision Blizzard," Spencer writes. "We will offer as many Activision Blizzard games as we can within Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass, both new titles and games from Activision Blizzard’s incredible catalogue. We also announced today that Game Pass now has more than 25 million subscribers. The fantastic franchises across Activision Blizzard will also accelerate our plans for Cloud Gaming, allowing more people in more places around the world to participate in the Xbox community."
Creators of Call of Duty, Warcraft, Candy Crush, Tony Hawk, Diablo, Overwatch, Spyro, Hearthstone, Guitar Hero, Crash Bandicoot, StarCraft and more join Team Xbox As a team, we are on a mission to extend the joy and community of gaming to everyone on the planet. We all know that gaming is the most vibrant and […]
Researchers from WordPress security company Wordfence found a security vulnerability that affected 3 different WordPress plugins, which has impacted over 84,000 websites and could be abused by a malicious threat actor to take over vulnerabile sites. “This flaw made it possible for an attacker to update arbitrary site options on a vulnerable site, provided they could […]
We knew that one game was dropping onto Game Pass today - the hack-and-slashy Nobody Saves the World (Console, Cloud and PC) from Guacamelee devs Drinkbox Studios - but we had no idea that there would be a second. And not any old second, as this is the Xbox bow for perennial PlayStation exclusive, Danganronpa.
In 2022, ensuring best-in-class Data Management is anything but straightforward for CIOs and IT leaders. The volume, variety, and velocity of data being collected have grown exponentially, as has the number of cloud solutions that require the use of this data without your direct control. To be successful, you must enable your organization to leverage […]
