Microsoft announced the acquisition of Activision Blizzard

Microsoft is back in action - they have just announced an unexpected acquisition that will include Activision Blizzard and its franchises in their Xbox family. If you're surprised - you're not the only one, but you didn't hear wrong. Xbox now owns franchises such as Call of Duty, Warcraft, Diablo, Overwatch, Crash Bandicoot, Starcraft, Candy Crush, Spyro, Tony Hawk, Guitar Hero…

The price at which Microsoft is taking over Activision Blizzard? An amazing and staggering $ 68.7 billion. In the cache. Such a large transaction will not be realized overnight but will take time. Activision Blizzard will not officially become Microsoft until mid-2023. Until then, both companies will operate separately.

But this takeover is not only shocking from the perspective of the amount paid and by the very fact that it is the largest acquisition in the history of the gaming industry. It is also shocking because Activision Blizzard has been among the most hated companies in the video game industry for the last year. Gamers are not very happy with the declining quality of their games, and on the other hand, the company itself is struggling with lawsuits for discrimination and harassment of employees. While Xbox’s image is increasingly positive among gamers because of the Game Pass, buying a company where workers protest now and then while the company’s management is dragged through the courts… is a pretty risky move.

But what does that mean for players? For starters, Microsoft announces that they want to bring as many Activision Blizzard games as possible to the Xbox and PC Game Pass. They haven’t confirmed which games, so we can’t yet say that Call of Duty will come out via a Game Pass subscription in the future.

Does this mean that Call of Duty, Diablo, and Overwatch are becoming Xbox exclusive? There is no explicit answer to that yet. Microsoft has announced that it wants to deliver Activision Blizzard games to everyone - on all devices… but nowhere is it explicitly stated that this includes PlayStation consoles. Only the Xbox community on consoles, tablets, cell phones, computers, etc. is mentioned.

Activision Blizzard said it was looking for a partner for a future marked by cloud gaming, machine learning, and new user interfaces. They say that in choosing a partner, all paths led to Microsoft and that Microsoft needed to have many years of experience and importance in the video game industry.

They say they are aware that this will open up a whole range of questions among the players. They will provide answers to these questions gradually - through forums and events where they will say what will happen next.