EA Doesn't Care About Microsoft's Activision Blizzard Acquisition
The UK government blocked Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard, a result that Sony is no doubt happy about after PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan spent months lobbying against the merger. However, not every company in the games industry is as invested. EA CEO Andrew Wilson stated that he's "indifferent" about whether the merger is ultimately successful.
"This is a question I get asked a lot, I almost am never allowed to answer that question, as it turns out," Wilson said in a Q&A following EA's latest earnings call (thanks, VGC). "What I would say is, I don't know what's going to happen with Activision and Microsoft.
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"Again, we continue to be Microsoft's biggest partner - I think we're the number one publisher on their platform - so whether that deal goes through or not is not really material to us broadly."
More generally, Wilson spoke about the future of the industry and, in particular, acquisitions. We've seen more and more over recent years with Microsoft acquiring Obsidian, Bethesda, and Mojang, Embracer Group acquiring Crystal Dynamis, Eidos Montreal, and several others, while PlayStation bought out Insomniac, Bluepoint Games, and Bungie.
"Longer term, will there be industry consolidation?" Wilson said. "Will there be broader entertainment consolidation? If I was predicting the future over the long term I would say that's almost a certainty at some level. I would love for [EA] to have the scale to be a meaningful consolidator in that space. I think that we have tremendous assets with respect to the future of entertainment. But as it stands, I think that we're indifferent as to whether [Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard]
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