"The deal that will change the industry forever": Analysts on Microsoft's Activision acquisition
James Batchelor
Editor-in-Chief
Wednesday 19th January 2022
Activision Blizzard
Microsoft
The number of mergers and acquisitions taking place across the games industry has dramatically risen in recent years, but every now and then there's a deal that manages to stun everyone in the business.
Take-Two seemingly managed to achieve that with its $12.7 billion takeover of mobile giant Zynga, but yesterday Microsoft blew that out of the water with a proposed $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
This is not only the biggest games M&A deal of recent years, or even the past decade, but the largest in the industry's history. In fact, GlobalData principal analyst Rupantar Guha goes further in declaring it the "biggest tech merger and acquisition" in history. As many have observed, it's only a few billion dollars shy of Disney's $71.3 billion acquisition of Fox, making the Microsoft-Activision deal one of the biggest in entertainment, not just gaming.
We reached out to a range of analysts to discuss the implications of the takeover, and all were as shocked as the rest of the industry.
Dr Serkan Toto, Kantan Games
"The deal is almost out of this world and will change the industry forever," Kantan Games' Dr Serkan Toto tells us, adding: "Microsoft's first-party studios have been, at least in my mind, behind Sony's for the longest time. It needed a big solution to catch up to Sony, and Bethesda was not enough: this deal can be a game changer for them."
Nick Parker of Parker Consulting says the deal underlines Microsoft's "obsessions to right the wrongs of the Xbox One era" and push Sony into third place behind itself and Nintendo. If supply issues are resolved this year, the addition of Activision Blizzard's franchises could
Read more on gamesindustry.biz
