Xbox's Activision Blizzard is about more than beating Sony | Opinion

gamesindustry.biz:

Christopher Dring

Head of Games B2B

Tuesday 18th January 2022

Activision Blizzard

Microsoft

Microsoft acquiring one of the world's biggest games publishers is certainly not good news for PlayStation.

Even if Call of Duty remains a multiformat IP (which given its scale and reach, may be the case), losing more big brands and big developers to Xbox is going to make life harder for PlayStation, and indeed anyone trying to keep people engaged in their ecosystems.

But this huge, industry-shaking acquisition isn't really about Microsoft selling more boxes than its rivals. It's not even really about Game Pass (although both of those things are part of the wider strategy). It's about that dream of going beyond the hundreds of millions that Microsoft currently reaches, and getting to billions of players. Activision Blizzard gives Microsoft some of the biggest weapons yet in achieving that goal.

King and Blizzard are two of the biggest components of this proposed acquisition, and neither have anything to do with beating PS5

I would actually argue that Call of Duty isn't even the most important part of the acquisition here. Call of Duty is one of the biggest games brands in the world, but it's growth has slowed recently, and when it comes to shooters, Xbox had plenty of strong IP already through the likes of Halo, Doom, Wolfenstein and Gears of War.

For me, the acquisition gives Microsoft two significant additions that actually has little to do with the console space at all.

First, there is Blizzard. The developer has had some recent troubles, but it remains one of the biggest names in PC games development in the world. Microsoft has some strength in PC through brands like Age of Empires and Flight Simulator, and it's been steadily growing