Activision Blizzard’s Bobby Kotick is leaving next week

thesixthaxis.com:

Long-time Activision Blizzard boss Bobby Kotick is leaving the company following its acquisition by Microsoft in October. Kotick will depart on 29th December, with Microsoft largely keeping the company’s leadership intact outside of this.

In general the leadership teams across Activision Blizzard will remain in place and now report to Microsoft’s Matt Booty (President of Game Content and Studios). This means Thomas Tippl (Vice Chairman, Activision Blizzard), Rob Kostich (President, Activision Publishing), Mike Ybarra (President, Blizzard Entertainment) and Tjodolf Sommestad (President, King) will remain.

Elsewhere, Microsoft exec Jill Braff has been moved into the position of Head of ZeniMax/Bethesda studios following Pete Hines’ recent departure, so all creative leads within Bethesda’s group of studios will now report to her.

Kotick had become a much vilified figure within video game circles in the last few years in particular. On the business front, he has led Activision Blizzard to almost unparalleled success with the Call of Duty franchise, not to mention major hits with toys-to-life series Skylanders (before sensibly calling it quits ahead of the genre’s crash), Destiny in partnership with Bungie, and of course the ever-popular output of Blizzard – Activision and Blizzard merged together back in 2008.

However, there’s been strong criticism in the last few years on numerous levels. Activision’s game release portfolio has shrunk dramatically so that all of the collected studios have been absorbed into producing content for Call of Duty’s year’s games and seasonal updates, while Blizzard’s games have suffered from a string of unpopular decision by fans, whether that’s the shift from Overwatch to Overwatch 2, the strange