Microsoft Purchasing Activision-Blizzard

Pyrian on 18/1/2022 at 17:29

(https://news.microsoft.com/2022/01/18/microsoft-to-acquire-activision-blizzard-to-bring-the-joy-and-community-of-gaming-to-everyone-across-every-device/) Microsoft to acquire Activision Blizzard to bring the joy and community of gaming to everyone, across every device

Well, that's huge. It's interesting because it's both entirely unexpected and yet not really very surprising. With all the controversy, ATVI's stock had kind of tanked, and MS is buying it at a relative discount to its peak about a year ago. ATVI was ripe for an acquisition and yet it wasn't widely expected because it's so big. MS, however, has the cash (and it's a cash buyout, which is unusual) and the motive (expand its game business, yes, but also moves it heavily into the mobile space since King is included).

Anarchic Fox on 18/1/2022 at 17:54

If this ends up ousting Activision-Blizzards' upper managers, that's a very good thing, considering how awful they are. Normally I want Microsoft to have a light touch with its newly-acquired studios, but in this case I want the opposite.

Does anyone have a full list of Microsoft's newly-acquired studios? I can think of this, Obsidian, Double Fine, and Mojang, but I think I'm missing some. Edit: I was forgetting InXile and Bethesda.

WingedKagouti on 18/1/2022 at 19:23

(https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2022/01/18/welcoming-activision-blizzard-to-microsoft-gaming/) From the XBox site version:

Quote:

As a company, Microsoft is committed to our journey for inclusion in every aspect of gaming, among both employees and players. We deeply value individual studio cultures. We also believe that creative success and autonomy go hand-in-hand with treating every person with dignity and respect. We hold all teams, and all leaders, to this commitment. We're looking forward to extending our culture of proactive inclusion to the great teams across Activision Blizzard.

This hopefully means there will be some outside scrutiny on the actions of the ABK leadership.

Jason Moyer on 19/1/2022 at 03:34

Quote Posted by Anarchic Fox

Does anyone have a full list of Microsoft's newly-acquired studios? I can think of this, Obsidian, Double Fine, and Mojang, but I think I'm missing some. Edit: I was forgetting InXile and Bethesda.

Arkane. Id. MachineGames.

Jason Moyer on 19/1/2022 at 03:39

I miss the days when simply forcing users to install your web browser as part of an OS was seen by most as a blatant anti-competitive practice.

Anarchic Fox on 19/1/2022 at 05:05

Quote Posted by Jason Moyer

Arkane. Id. MachineGames.

Ninja Theory too. The scale is intimidating. Microsoft doesn't even need third-party developers anymore.

Jason Moyer on 19/1/2022 at 06:13

(https://www.pcgamer.com/every-game-and-studio-microsoft-now-owns/)

I just realized this means Raven and Id are the same company now. So theoretically we could have a Hexen reboot using new IdTech or something.

demagogue on 19/1/2022 at 14:35

Well I was moving towards indie games already anyway.

Anarchic Fox on 21/1/2022 at 21:01

Apparently this deal is an order of magnitude more expensive than other recent ones, at $69 billion versus Zenimax's $7.5 billion, Marvel's $4 billion, and Lucasfilm's $4.1 billion. And I'm wondering how that makes any sense. Was the mobile division (King) much bigger than I realized?

WingedKagouti on 21/1/2022 at 21:34

Quote Posted by Anarchic Fox

Was the mobile division (King) much bigger than I realized?

Mobile was about 1/3rd of ABK's net revenue in 2020. And that was in a year where the Activision part did a lot better than usual, which as far as I can tell from their annual investor report was mostly due to console releases.