Xbox will take a ‘respectful’ approach to revisiting ‘amazing trove’ of Activision Blizzard franchises
Microsoft’s head of gaming has discussed how the company plans to approach utilising Activision Blizzard’s vast back catalogue of games.
The Xbox maker finally completed its $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard last week.
In closing the game industry’s (and Microsoft’s) biggest ever deal, the Xbox maker took ownership of franchises including Call of Duty, Warcraft, Diablo, Guitar Hero, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, Overwatch, Crash Bandicoot and many more.
“The amount of franchises that we now have in our portfolio is kind of inspiring, it’s daunting,” Phil Spencer told the official Xbox podcast. “I feel that we have to be a great custodian for the content that we touch. These are memories from people on different platforms, different decades.
“And I want to make sure that when we’re going back and visiting something, that we do it with our complete ability, a motivated team that wants to go work on something and make a difference, not just create something for financial gain, or create something for a PR announcement and not deliver on the product.
“So, I’m going to start with the teams, and what are they passionate about, and that’s why I’m excited to go on these [studio] visits and then we’ll look at it.”
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Spencer continued: “I think we’ve done an OK job as Xbox, I don’t think we’ve done an A+ job on looking at our franchises and revisiting them. It’s always a trade-off between what do you do that’s new and going back and doing something.
“I do think with Game Pass, we have the ability to maybe pick a couple of franchises every year and almost do a ‘revisited’ – I just made up that term, so it’s not a brand, it’s not on a box.
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