Microsoft Activision Merger Closes This Week
gamesreviews.comIt’s a headline that I didn’t think would take me the best part of two years to write… but the Microsoft Activision merger looks likely to close this week.
Honestly, I’ve spent so long writing about this thing. It’s almost like the actual impact of it no longer clicks. It’s all been about the detail and the largeness, but not the actual long-term impact.
So, for instance, within the week Crash and Spyro will be Xbox mascots along with Banjo Kazooie. If SEGA is still top of Microsoft’s acquisition list it may not be long before you add him and his friends to that list as well. That’s the making of a hell of a good Smash Bros clone. Hell, think of the Amiibo-copy potential. Think of the Skylanders revival.
That’s obviously based on just what IP they’ll have, and it’s also dependent on another large (almost inevitable) merger, but even half of that wouldn’t have seemed possible just a short three or so years ago.
I did a list of IP that’ll be owned by Microsoft following the merger the other day and it has gotten me thinking. The potential to branch out from this point is unreal.
Yes, it’s all about Call of Duty and Candy Crush for the revenue, and Diablo, Warcraft and Starcraft for the PC crowd. But Xbox has a casual problem too. This set will really booster their appeal with younger audiences.
Who they’ll obviously then crush with the difficulty of Crash 1 and 4. Ah, it’s like history is repeating itself.
The last holdout on this deal was the CMA and they provisionally approved it two weeks ago. There was a standard wait for third-party responses – at this point it’s unlikely they received anything major, and infinitesimally unlikely they received anything that’ll change the CMA’s decision. They’ll clear it as soon as
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