Microsoft Acquiring Activision Blizzard for USD $68.7 billion

In a sudden, surprising twist, Microsoft is making their next big move in the gaming industry by acquiring Activision Blizzard for USD $68.7 billion. Here’s what went down.

Microsoft Acquiring Activision Blizzard

Microsoft has made moves to acquire Activision Blizzard in a deal worth USD $68.7 billion. This is notably bigger than their acquisition of LinkedIn, which is worth USD $26 billion, and it’s going turn them into the “3rd largest gaming company”, right behind Tencent and Sony.

The goal here is for all of Activision Blizzard’s IPs to be added into Xbox Game Pass, which has already amassed over 25 million subscribers. This will include franchises like Warcraft, Diablo, Overwatch, Call of Duty, and more.

We’re investing deeply in world-class content, community and the cloud to usher in a new era of gaming that puts players and creators first and makes gaming safe, inclusive and accessible to all.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella

This is particularly interesting as recently, the acquired company was in the limelight for a number of sexual harassment and gender equality issues, with plenty of employees voicing out on sexual misconduct within the company. It resulted in an USD $18 million settlement with the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in September.

While they may not be responsible for what happened, it’s still up to them to redeem the name of Activision Blizzard past all the negativity, but no word yet on exactly how they plan on approaching it. CEO Bobby Kotick will likely leave when the deal finalizes as the company is expected to report directly to the head of Xbox, Phil Spencer.

The last time the company behind Windows made an acquisition in the gaming space, it was Bethesda for USD $7.5 billion, which already shocked many. That brought a total of new 23 first party games to Xbox Game Pass. They expect the deal to close in fiscal year 2023, so it will still take around 18 months before it’s truly official.

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Pokdepinion: This came from out of nowhere, about the same level as that RKO meme. On a more serious note, this gives me hope for some of the upcoming games like Overwatch 2, so I hope we’ll get to see some major changes soon. At this point, it’s more of a necessity than anything else for the company to survive given how big of a mess it became recently.