Microsoft’s Gaming Chief Phil Spencer Is Still Open to Acquisitions After Activision Deal
After a tough year, Microsoft's video-gaming chief is still looking at acquisitions and charting how to compete and partner in the markets for handheld game devices and mobile stores.
Deals that add “geographic diversity,” including in Asia, might be worthwhile, Phil Spencer said in an interview Tuesday at Bloomberg's offices in New York. Buying another mobile company would add to titles Microsoft picked up in its $69 billion (roughly Rs. 5,82,417 crore) acquisition of Activision Blizzard last year, he said.
“We definitely want to be in the market, and when we can find teams and technology and capability that add to what we're trying to do in gaming at Microsoft, absolutely we will keep our heads up,” Spencer said. Still, there's nothing “imminent” and very large deals are probably off the table at present as the company is spending a lot of time absorbing Activision Blizzard employees, he said.
Microsoft wants to diversify the teams working on games by looking more to China, he said. The company developed a new mobile version of Age of Empires, a world-building franchise that first appeared in the 1990s, by partnering with Tencent Holdings Microsoft and Tencent released the game globally in October.
“It's been a good area for us to learn from creative teams that have real unique capability,” Spencer said. “The real opportunity is to partner with creative teams in China for global.”
The executive, who has repeatedly professed his admiration for handheld game devices, said the “expectation is that we would do something” in that category. Although the company is working on prototypes and considering what it might do, Spencer also asked his group to look at the market and develop its vision based on what it learns. Such a device is a few years out, he said.
In the coming months, designers and engineers will focus on making the Xbox app work better on existing portable devices and partnering with hardware makers to make sure their products sync with Xbox games and
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