Nearly two years to the day that Microsoft announced that it would be buying Activision-Blizzard for $68.8 billion, the deal has been finalized. It's official: Microsoft now owns Crash Bandicoot, Diablo, Spyro the Dragon, Overwatch, Candy Crush, and many more. The acquisition was hotly contested by both the United States' Federal Trade Commission and United Kingdom's Competition and Markets Authority, but Microsoft altered the deal slightly, argued its case in court, and won. This deal solidifies Xbox as the third biggest gaming brand in the world, only behind Tencent and Sony.

According to Xbox's Phil Spencer, the next step is to bring many of Activision and Blizzard's game lineup to Xbox Game Pass.

Players have always been at the center of everything we do. And as we grow, we’ll continue to keep players at the heart of it all. We’ll continue to listen to your feedback, build a community where you can be yourself, where developers can do their best work, and continue to make really fun games. As promised, we will also continue to make more games available in more places – and that begins now by enabling cloud streaming providers and players to stream Activision Blizzard games in the European Economic Area, a commitment made to the European Commission. Today we start the work to bring beloved Activision, Blizzard, and King franchises to Game Pass and other platforms. We’ll share more about when you can expect to play in the coming months. We know you’re excited – and we are too.

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[Kevbo]

hippity hoppity your company is now my property

 

[leon315]

wonder how many people here ALLIN Activision stocks?

 

[SS4]

Kewl, bunch of games i dont play. Used to play a few of those IP but they suck today . . .
In the end Playstation still got better exclusives and I mostly play on PC so nothing changes really . . .

 

[HarveyHouston]

Damn.

 

[MrSandstorm]

Wonder how big of a golden parachute the former AB CEO got from this

 

[Marc_LFD]

Crash Bandicoot and Spyro now belong to Microsoft? That sounds weird.

 

[pustal]

Nah, there just wasn't much push-back because ActiBlizzard was being run into the ground by its existing owners/managers. Only Playstation players obsessed with CoD were adamantly against the acquisition, but Microsoft isn't fool enough to leave that money on the table. They'll even be bringing CoD to the next Nintendo console.

For a time, until they don't. I don't care for CoD but market consolidation means they'll dictate trends and even prices. And trends we saw early that they intend to go to the way of hybrid online games, even in single player by the end of the decade, meaning their games will be tied to their servers and unplayable when they shut.

 

[Xanthe]

Maybe they'll make WoW better. Maybe Microsoft is smart enough to expand on classic era.

 

[chrisrlink]

MS needs to keep their promise to reactivate sierra i miss the sierra games

 

[ZER-O]

Overwatch Racing Kart with Loot Box when?

 

[LightBeam]

Never forget Rareware

Rare was already dead before Microsoft bought them. Maybe even before Nintendo refused to acquire them. And honestly Sea of Thieves is a great game, they're doing fine under Microsoft tho the development of Everwild seems to be a mess. Just very recently Xbox understood that a « hands off approach » wasn't working with every studio and maybe they'll step in (be it Rare, Arkane Austin or ABK)

 

[17hitcombooo]

i seriously hope all the other activision devs get something to do other than call of duty i swear to god these companies have potential

 

[stanleyopar2000]

Never relevant???

GoldenEye, DKC, Banjo, Conker?

You must be either very young or don't like fun

they used the word "woke." (uneducated and likely told what to be angry about) Their entire argument was just made wholly invalid

 

[SylverReZ]

Welp, I guess 1M users are going to delete their Microsoft account now, and throw away their Xbox Series X consoles.

 

[Xzi]

For a time, until they don't.

Unless you're seeing something with market trends that I'm not, I don't think there's ever gonna be a time where it's financially advantageous to revert back to exclusivity. Microsoft makes barely anything on hardware sales, to the extent that they may even drop out of the console race in a generation or two and focus on their role as a publisher.

 

[17hitcombooo]

Microsoft makes barely anything on hardware sales, to the extent that they may even drop out of the console race in a generation or two and focus on their role as a publisher.

you mean the switch to digital only consoles WONT pay off for them???? quite a shocker

 

[pustal]

Unless you're seeing something with market trends that I'm not, I don't think there's ever gonna be a time where it's financially advantageous to revert back to exclusivity. Microsoft makes barely anything on hardware sales, to the extent that they may even drop out of the console race in a generation or two and focus on their role as a publisher.

They aren't planning on though, they are planning on making games cloud based. And they do make a profit on games sold on their platform.

And yes, they have been moving away from exclusivity but more so to include the PC than anything else. And if they dominate the market nothing stops than from changing their mind.

They have some consumer friendly stances to compete, not out of kindness. Remove the need to compete and they can do whatever they want to profit without fear of losing the market.

 

[RedColoredStars]

Who cares? Most of their games suck.

 

[osaka35]

well. I like owning my games, and with microsoft seemingly trying to get away from physical games...this does not bode well.

 

[Xzi]

They aren't planning on though, they are planning on making games cloud based. And they do make a profit on games sold on their platform.

And yes, they have been moving away from exclusivity but more so to include the PC than anything else. And if they dominate the market nothing stops than from changing their mind.

They have some consumer friendly stances to compete, not out of kindness. Remove the need to compete and they can do whatever they want to profit without fear of losing the market.

That's just it: there is no "dominating" the current market without a multi-platform strategy. Call of Duty would lose damn near 50% of its player base if Microsoft stopped releasing it on Playstation. Even with the ActiBlizz acquisition, I'd bet on Xbox finishing third in revenue this generation behind Sony and Nintendo, just as they did last gen. They aren't in a position where they can take massive risks, and they probably never will be again. As long as Spencer's strategy continues working, there's no need to fix what isn't broken.