A guide to Microsoft’s Xbox game studios empire

theverge.com:

With the impending purchase of Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion dollars, Microsoft is now the third-largest video game publisher in the world by revenue. It owns several of the biggest gaming franchises of all time, including Minecraft, The Elder Scrolls, and now Call of Duty and World of Warcraft. Since the early 2000s, Microsoft has slowly but steadily expanded its holdings, adding to its stable of first-party developers. An explosion of acquisitions in the late teens combined with the purchase of Bethesda last year made Microsoft a many-armed behemoth in the gaming industry, surpassed only by Sony and Tencent. Here’s a breakdown of the studios and games Microsoft could own if the deal goes through.

pic.twitter.com/zldVsmhJ5M

Though formally established as Xbox Game Studios Publishing in 2000, Microsoft has published a wealth of games dating back to the ’70s, including PC standards like Solitaire and Minesweeper. Throughout the aughts, Microsoft created several first-party studios to handle the development of its flagship series. In 2001, Microsoft founded Turn 10 studios for Forza Motorsport. Halo Infinite developer 343 Industries was created in 2007. The Coalition was born in 2010 after Microsoft bought the Gears of War series from Epic Games. In 2018, The Initiative became Microsoft’s first Santa Monica-based developer that is working on a newPerfect Dark game, and in 2019, World’s Edge was established to oversee the Age of Empires franchise.

Microsoft’s first big acquisition was when it bought British-based developer Rare in 2002. Throughout the ’90s and into the early aughts, Rare became emblematic of the mascot platformer genre with the release of Battletoads in 1991, continuing with the Donkey Kong Country