21 months later, Microsoft finally owns Activision Blizzard
polygon.comMicrosoft has announced that it has — finally — completed its $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, the developer and publisher of Call of Duty, Warcraft, and Candy Crush.
It’s a deal of unprecedented scale in the game industry, which took 21 months to complete. Microsoft faced opposition from regulators in the U.S. and U.K., as well as from its competitor Sony, whose leaders feared losing Call of Duty to Xbox exclusivity.
In notes to Xbox and Activision Blizzard staff, Xbox head Phil Spencer and Activision CEO Bobby Kotick said that Kotick would stay on in his post until at least the end of 2023, in order to assist with the integration of the two companies.
In order to get the deal over the line, Microsoft defeated the Federal Trade Commission in a court case, and bowed to pressure from the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority by carving out the cloud gaming rights to Activision Blizzard games and selling them to Ubisoft. Microsoft also signed deals with PlayStation, Nintendo, Nvidia, and others promising to make Call of Duty — and, in some cases, other Activision Blizzard games — available on rival consoles and cloud platforms 10 years into the future.
What it gets in return is ownership of some of the biggest names in gaming, including annual shooter franchise Call of Duty from Activision; King’s all-conquering mobile game series Candy Crush; and Blizzard Entertainment’s Warcraft, Diablo, and Overwatch universes. There’s also a treasure trove of currently unused, or underused, gaming properties in the Activision vault, including Guitar Hero, StarCraft, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, Crash Bandicoot, and Spyro. And the deal opens up the possibility of any and all Activision Blizzard games being added to
Read more on polygon.com
