Microsoft buys Activision, Blizzard and King studios in the biggest move in video game history

On By Garmin Philip

Microsoft has just announced that it is buying the Activision conglomerate Blizzard King for nearly $70 billion. This movement represents an earthquake in an increasingly unpredictable sector.

If in 2019 we all raised our hands due to the purchase by Microsoft of the entertainment giant Zenimax, parent company of the Bethesda studios. Now it’s our turn to get our hands dirty, because the acquisition that has just been announced is unprecedented.

To give us an idea, Microsoft paid Zenimax about 7,500 million dollars to take control of the company. This was already one of the largest payouts in the industry.

Now, the purchase of Microsoft to take over Activision, Blizzard and King has been valued at 68,000 million dollars. Almost 10 times what Bethesda cost and a record never seen in video games.

As explained in The New York Times, this is the biggest acquisition in Microsoft’s 46-year history and a big bet on its future, as incorporates into its ranks the studios responsible for sagas such as World of Warcraft, Call of Duty and Candy Crush.

the conglomerate Activision Blizzard King was, until now, one of the most important in the video game world together with Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, PlayStation and Xbox, hence the purchase is historic in economic but also reputational terms.


Game Pass Ultimate, compatible with PC, Xbox and mobile devices, is now reduced to only €1 for the first three months, and without permanence.

Right now, the company is going through a very bad streak due to recent complaints by employees who accuse the company of being responsible for dozens of cases of sexual harassment and abuse. This situation had pushed the company to the limit, which has not known how to react according to experts.

With stocks going down every week (a drop of 50% in a year) and with the feeling that no one wanted to pay for the broken dishes, Microsoft has risked buying it at a good time, economically speaking, since the price of the company is significantly lower than a year ago.

Right now what we know about it is that Activision Blizzard King will be part of the Xbox studios under the seal of the green company, so we assume that many of its sagas will be coming to the Game Pass service.

Speaking clearly, these are the games that Microsoft has bought with this movement: Call of Duty, Warcraft, Candy Crush, Tony Hawk, Diablo, Overwatch, Spyro, Hearthstone, Guitar Hero, Crash Bandicoot, StarCraft y varios más.

Whether this purchase will prevent Call of Duty players from playing on PlayStation or if World of Warcraft will become a Game Pass subscription game remains to be seen., since we are in the early stages, but there is nothing like seeing what happened with Bethesda.

The transaction can be seen as a “win” for Bobby Kotick, longtime CEO of Activision, whom some critics had tried to remove from office over the controversy and for not being able to properly manage the current crisis.

And it is that Kotick negotiated a large premium for investors (Microsoft is paying $95 per share, about 45% above his company’s pre-announcement stock price.) and will continue to run the company, at least until the purchase is finalized, says Tom Warren.

Time will tell who wins with this move, but it seems very risky. The only thing that Microsoft has going for it is that, if it goes well, they have brought into their ranks one of the largest and most profitable players in the industry.



Reference-computerhoy.com