Xbox won’t stop company acquisitions after completion of deal with Activision Blizzard

In his attempt to grow his line of first-party studios, the head of Xbox, Phil Spencer has stated that the company is open to more acquisitions in the future. According to statements to CNBC, Spencer was responding to a question about whether Xbox and Microsoft are going to stop their acquisition spree of game companies after the end of their agreement with Activision Blizzard.

Spencer responded by stating that the competitive video game market essentially means that Xbox will not be able to pause its expansion plans.

“This is such a competitive market that I don’t think we can pause anything,” Spencer said. “Tencent is the largest game company on the planet today and they continue to invest heavily in game content and game creators. Sony is a bigger business than us in gaming today and they continue to invest.”

“We strive to be a major player here,” Spencer said. “We want to deliver great content for our players and we’re going to stay active, whether that’s investing in our internal teams who are already building great games that people know and love, or building new partnerships.”

Spencer also talked about networking and forming new partnerships at the currently ongoing Tokyo Game Show.

“One of the things that I love about coming here to Tokyo is that the developers that I meet with, the new partnerships that we have with people like Kojima Productions, and go talk to some of our existing publishing partners and independent creators about the games we want to build.”

“And if it becomes an acquisitive M&A job, we’re active there as well. Therefore, the work for us is never done. It’s a competitive market and I want to make sure Xbox is at the forefront of innovation and competition.”

Microsoft and Xbox are currently in the process of acquiring Activision Blizzard, which would essentially turn some of the world’s biggest titles, franchises like Call of Duty, world of warcraft Y Overwatchin first-party franchises for Xbox.

However, the acquisition has been slowed down somewhat as the UK regulator is considering deeper scrutiny of the deal in light of protests from PlayStation over the possibility of Call of Duty become Xbox exclusive.