With Activision Blizzard Acquisition, The Microsoft Mobile Footprint Grows Stronger

gamespot.com:

Earlier today, Microsoft shocked the industry with news it will acquire Activision Blizzard for nearly $70 billion. While reactions came pouring in--and memes quickly flooding social media--most of the discourse has centered around Activision Blizzard's flagship titles.

While those questions are certainly valid--"is Call of Duty going Xbox-exclusive?" being a particularly juicy topic--there's a facet of this acquisition that is going woefully under-analyzed: the Xbox brand's newly acquired foothold in mobile gaming.

Microsoft is no stranger to gaming on mobile devices, pushing cloud-based gaming through its Game Pass service since 2019 when it was called Project xCloud. That said, the company's mobile-specific portfolio is surprisingly sparse. Minecraft is a juggernaut in every format, sure, but after that?

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Halo: Spartan Assault was a mobile-exclusive game for a while… until it was ported to Xbox One. Wordament was the Windows Phone answer to Words with Friends, but never caught on. Heck, the «second best mobile game in Xbox's portfolio» might actually be Fallout Shelter, which only counts thanks to Xbox's recent Bethesda acquisition. They've tried other brands--from the AR experiment Minecraft Earth to the mobile racer Forza Street--but both of those have since been sent to or announced for the chopping block.

That's not the full Xbox mobile portfolio of course, but the point stands: the Xbox brand and mobile gaming have not meshed well. Game Pass on the cloud is one thing, but we're talking about the core