Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard Deal Is a Move Toward the Post-Console World
Microsoft’s war chest is a dynamo. With revenues that rival the GDP of a small nation, it’s got enough cash on hand to buy whatever it wants. When it does, it just acquires another money-making machine. Its latest gadget? Video game company Activision Blizzard, which Microsoft announced yesterday it was buying for a staggering $68.7 billion—more than the $26.2 billion it paid for LinkedIn in 2016, almost ten times the $7.5 billion it paid for Bethesda's parent ZeniMax Media last year. Microsoft now owns Call of Duty and Halo; it owns The Elder Scrolls and World of Warcraft. It owns Candy Crush. It also owns Diablo, Overwatch, Spyro, Hearthstone, Guitar Hero, Crash Bandicoot, and StarCraft. Its chest is full—but not with machines.
It’s tempting to view the acquisition as the latest shot fired in the console wars, a ploy to use Activision Blizzard’s deep catalog to sell Xboxes. But that would be shortsighted. If anything, the deal shows Microsoft is far more concerned with acquiring gamers—it’ll gain 400 million monthly active players as part of the deal—than moving units. "The fantastic franchises across Activision Blizzard will also accelerate our plans for Cloud Gaming,” the company said in a statement announcing the deal, “allowing more people in more places around the world to participate in the Xbox community using phones, tablets, laptops and other devices you already own." This is Microsoft’s move to a post-console world. It’s not about getting you to buy a gadget; it's about luring you into an ecosystem.
When discussing online video game services like Stadia, Sony's PlayStation Now, and Microsoft's Cloud Gaming, insiders often reach for the same descriptor: X is "Netflix for games." The goal of each service is to
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