Microsoft Buying Activision Is The Biggest Deal In Gaming History And It Isn’t Even Close
Microsoft has announced plans to acquire Activision Blizzard for an eye-watering $68.7 billion - just short of $69 billion. Damn. I can’t even imagine that amount of money, especially with the deal’s documentation stating that this figure is being paid entirely in cash. If I didn’t think Phil Spencer was a big money baller before, I certainly do now. This deal is huge, and easily the biggest of its kind we’ve ever seen in the medium. Seriously, there is no competition.
When Microsoft acquired Bethesda a couple of years ago for a much smaller sum, many of us viewed it as an acquisition that would change everything. It hasn’t yet, but games take a long time to make, and for now Bethesda’s biggest hits are still on PlayStation. In case of Deathloop, even heading to Sony as a timed exclusive. But it was still a massive shift, seeing a number of titles become exclusive to Microsoft platforms while ushering in a future where Starfield, Fallout, and other such properties would never see the light of day on PlayStation ever again. It thinned the playing field in a way we’ll never forget.
Related: There Is No Right First Yakuza Game
Compared to Activision, and no disrespect to Bethesda, this is small potatoes. The publisher, soon to be operating under the Microsoft umbrella, consists of several developers and properties that are borderline historic. Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro the Dragon, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, Guitar Hero, and so many others will soon be Xbox and PC exclusives, a monopolistic move that further reduces the amount of big players in the industry as things consolidate further into wide-reaching services.
In the Xbox Wire announcement post, CEO of Gaming Phil Spencer made it
Read more on thegamer.com
