Microsoft Finally Secures Activision-Blizzard

The biggest gaming news story of the year is finally coming to an end with it being announced that Microsoft have successfully acquired Activision-Blizzard after months of perseverance. The $69 billion purchase was approved by the United States FTC on July 14th after initially being rejected last December. Whilst the UK’s CMA is still undergoing an ‘investigation’ into the merger, the United States’ decision here likely seals the deal for Xbox acquiring Activision.

Now the biggest gaming acquisition by a long margin, Xbox will quickly put Activision-Blizzard to work in order to make some of their huge investment back as soon as possible. Its important to note that this purchase also includes the mobile brand ‘King’, who are behind the massive ‘Candy Crush’ games. These games require minimal upkeep and continue to print money- which was likely one of the biggest appeals of this acquisition for Microsoft.

This has led a lot of fans to ask what the future of Activision-Blizzard is under Xbox, however, and, more importantly, what will happen to franchises from the company? Will they all become exclusive to Xbox? Well', following news that Activision’s biggest franchise, Call of Duty, will continue to come to PlayStation for at least the next 10 years, Sony fans can breathe easy for a while. This offer was made to Sony months before but was rejected, with higher-ups citing that this wasn’t sustainable for Playstation’s relationship with Activision brands.

Although this means that Xbox could make Call of Duty a complete exclusive 10 years from now, its unclear as to whether this will actually happen. Unlike Sony, Microsoft have been far more open to the ideas of cross-play and keeping franchises running across their competitor’s products. This includes Minecraft, which is still playable on PlayStation consoles despite Xbox’s acquisition of Mojang in 2014. With the Call of Duty brand being almost as large as Minecraft, I wouldn’t be surprised to see it come to all consoles until it gets buried. For Xbox, the money-making potential is simply far too high.

Although Call of Duty has been confirmed to remain multi-platform, other franchises and games from the studios will likely move into being Xbox and PC only in the future. This could include any additional Overwatch projects or a potential Diablo V. Since no deals have been signed for these, Xbox will want to beef up its limited exclusive library as much as possible with these heavy-hitting franchises. Regardless, this acquisition has been a long-time coming for Microsoft, and the promise of certain Activision-Blizzard games remaining multi-platform is enough to take away from the sting for many PlayStation gamers. For now, we just have to wait to hear more concrete details on how the acquisition will work and how it will affect players on every platform- which should be coming in the next few weeks.