Buying Activision Blizzard is the industry's biggest gamble | Opinion
Rob Fahey
Contributing Editor
Friday 21st January 2022
Activision Blizzard
Microsoft
The announcement that Microsoft is to buy out Activision Blizzard for almost $70 billion marks a dramatic change to the competitive landscape of the games industry, and as such, it's going to be quite a long time before the dust settles fully and all of the questions raised by this acquisition are settled.
Some of the more obvious questions may have answers in a matter of months -- whether Call of Duty will become a platform-exclusive, for example (Phil Spencer has already hinted that he'd prefer the franchise to remain multiplatform), or what will happen to embattled Activision Blizzard CEO Robert Kotick after the buyout completes.
Other major questions will take a little longer to settle, such as the role that King -- Activision Blizzard's mobile gaming operation -- will play, or how Microsoft will set out to tackle the serious problems with harassment, misconduct and mistreatment of employees that have been revealed at the company over the past year.
Two of the biggest questions, however, will take several years to really pan out, because they're questions about what happens next -- both from Microsoft's side and in terms of the broader implications for the industry -- and those are very difficult questions to answer given that we're into uncharted territory here.
There's really no roadmap to look at in terms of how this kind of acquisition pans out -- we don't know how a deal this big works in the games business because it's never happened before
Firstly, how will Microsoft manage this acquisition and what practical impact will it have on the competitiveness of Xbox and Game Pass? Or perhaps even more broadly, what will Microsoft's gaming
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