It’s been a WILD 24hours in the world of gaming, and it’s all due to the recent announcement of Microsoft surprisingly digging into the deepest depths of their wallets; and pulling out the almost $70 billion big bucks to ultimately bring the entity that is Activision Blizzard, under their large, corporate wings. Now of course, this also comes with all of the various teams and studio’s that make up Activision Blizzard, and once you put that into perspective do you truly begin to realize how major of a deal this truly is.
While many current remaining Activision Blizzard fans may be a bit confused as to what this means going forward, especially those who may be enjoying Activision Blizzard titles that are on platforms outside of Xbox and Windows PC; Microsoft has made it clear that until the transaction completes, which is set to be sometime by the end of their next fiscal year (Spring 2023), both Activision Blizzard as well as Microsoft’s gaming departments will continue their operations independently.
As far as what lies ahead after the transaction completes, well, it seems Microsoft will be wasting no time when it comes to delivering more games to their audience, as they’ve also announced that once the deal closes, they will “offer as many Activision Blizzard games as possible within Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass, both new titles and games from Activision Blizzard’s incredible catalog.” What a way to ALREADY get even more people on the Game Pass hype train.
Now obviously this all doesn’t come without it’s numerous questions and concerns. As it’s no surprise to anyone at this point that Activision Blizzard has been under much scrutiny throughout the past year or so, mostly due to the numerous sexual misconduct allegations from staff, sexism plaguing the workplace, and so much more that it’s a bit hard to see this deal as a complete positive. Especially considering current CEO of Activision Blizzard, Bobby Kotick, is still employed; despite rumors and reports that he WILL in fact step down once the deal closes. But despite it all, this still remains to be one of the largest purchases we’ve seen within the gaming sphere in all of history, especially considering Microsoft JUST purchased Bethesda last year. And while I’m sure many other larger companies may now be looking to make similar moves, this has all made Microsoft and the Xbox team much more dominating than ever within the video game industry.
