Microsoft have just bought Activison. Now what?

Picture by Billy Freeman, from Unsplash

Yes. 

Yes!

HELLO?!

Wake up!

It's not a dream. This is for real. Microsoft have just bought Activision Blizzard. How much did they spend on them? Well, let's just get straight to the point. Nearly $70 billion! This acquisition is probably one of the most seismic buyouts we have ever witnessed. Yes, you can argue that Disney buying Fox was a huge deal, and you are right as this was in the movie and TV industry. But for the gaming industry, this is going to take a lot of time to tell you how massive this is for the future of Xbox and even PlayStation.

First off, the price. Microsoft's acquisition of Activision costs $68.7 billion. That is more than what Disney spent on Pixar and Marvel ($7.4 billion) in 2006 & 2009 for the same amount, Google bought Android for $50 million and Disney bought FOX for around $71 billion. It's insane that Microsoft have managed to pull this one out as they had acquired Bethesda in 2021, who are known for Skyrim, Fallout and Doom, for what sounds like a little $7.5 billion compared to this Leviathanesque deal that Phil Spencer has succeeded to pull through. And speaking of Phil Spencer...

Phil stepped in as the CEO of Xbox...*ahem*... I mean Microsoft Gaming in 2014. At the time, the Xbox One was met with a mixed response. There was FIFA 14, the new Assassin's Creed at the time, Call of Duty Ghosts and more games that were getting ready for release that year. But again, the Xbox One was getting mixed reviews with many people criticizing Microsoft for trying to get into the entertainment industry by opening a movie studio for original movies that weren't adapted from Xbox games, they were sponsoring live music events that did not have anything to do with what people thought the brand was all about and then there's Kinect. Yes, that was still around. It was a mandatory add on for the Xbox One and if you had no Kinect, then you were not allowed to play Halo.

So, Phil Spencer saw the mess that Xbox made and started cleaning up to hopefully change the perception of the Xbox One. His first major decision was to buy Mojang for $2.5 billion. This Swedish game company were known for the juggernaut known as Minecraft. From there, Xbox started to focus on releasing more independent games to focus on grabbing the attention of customers who were not really interested in flashy 3D graphics that took place in war torn environments. This resulted in the release of both Cuphead and Ori And The Blind Forest, two games Phil Spencer was pleased to see on the Xbox One. Again, from there, Microsoft started buying more game developers. 

It around this time that Phil Spencer believed that the more we buy game companies, the higher the chance of success. During E3, Phil Spencer announced that they had bought not just one but four video game developers! One of these was Playground Games, the developers that were responsible for the Forza racing games and are currently working on a new Fable game. Just a few months later, Obsidian Entertainment joined the Microsoft family. Double Fine were then bought by Phil's Microsoft beast during E3 2019, they were known for Psychonauts and remastered Grim Fandango (it won Game of the year in 1998 beating out Half Life, Metal Gear Solid and even Legend of Zelda : Ocarina of Time!). But the biggest acquisition of all time at the time was Bethesda. As already said in the paragraph where I was surprised about the prize, this was a big deal for the gaming industry. Fallout, Elder Scrolls, Doom, Dishonored, Evil Within and many more games by Bethesda were now part of the Xbox family. 

So, how did things go near the end of the Xbox One era? Well...it turned out to be a dark time for Xbox. Firstly, the Xbox One sold under the expectations of Microsoft. 51 million units were sold; on the other hand, the PlayStation 4 sold over 115 million units and the Nintendo Switch is still witnessing success with the console set to reach 100 million units at the end of this year. The next misstep for Microsoft was the over reliance on buying so many promising companies. When they bought Rareware in 2002, they were successful with their partnership with Nintendo by releasing Donkey Kong Country, Banjo & Kazooie, Goldeneye and many more games exclusively on the SNES & N64. When Microsoft bought the company for $375 million, they were hoping to have the same acclaim as Nintendo did with them. Unfortunately, Rare would only release games that were mostly forgotten or underlooked, with the exceptions of Kinect Sports and Sea Of Thieves. 

As many developers were bought, their games for the Xbox One were attracting millions of people to have a go, but it was not strong enough to grab the tails of Sony, who were bathing in success with the releases of Spiderman, God of War and Ghosts of Tsushima. On the other side, Xbox had released State of Decay 2, We Happy Few, and Cuphead. Yes, they were gaining some sales with some promising games; it would be a few years later when Cuphead, Ori and Outer Worlds were released on the Nintendo Switch. It seemed that Microsoft's idea of exclusivity was washed away. Last but not least, there were the main franchises Xbox were known for. Halo and Gears Of War were still getting games. Where Halo and Gears saw overwhelming praise for its first few games, the quality of their later releases started to lose steam, leading gamers to look for other experiences to play rather than play the sequel to Gears Of War that is basically the same as it was in the last one, only except that in the first game, Gearbox knew what they wanted to achieve and now it felt like it was that there was work which had be done for a paycheck. 

To quote YouTuber VideoGameDunkey on his video 'The Fall Of Xbox', he argued the following. "Either these guys have the s**tiest luck, or they aren't willing to dig deep and spend the money to get stuff made right". It seemed that Phil Spencer produced a lightbulb moment after watching the video and had a new trick up his sleeve.

It's January 2021 and Microsoft moved one step forward and bought one of the world's biggest video game developers. Activision Blizzard. They are known for Call of Duty, World Of Warcraft, Overwatch, Candy Crush Saga, the Tony Hawk franchise and even Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon. The last two have been widely regarded as PlayStation mascots, especially Crash Bandicoot. He was concieved by Naughty Dog, a company that's still part of Sony to this day. Crash was created to compete with Mario and Sonic, writing new folklore into video game culture. And now here he is with Coco and Dr. Neo Cortex, with Phil Spencer welcoming him and the gang around the Xbox villa where Doom Guy and Banjo are bathing in a hot tub with the Xbox logo erected at the bottom. The Crash franchise are now part of Toys For Bob, one of the many co developers part of the Activision family that is now part of the Xbox monopoly. But what's going on? Why now? What next for Microsoft and Blizzard? How is this happening?

Well, this might be one reason. In 2021, the State of California filed a gender discrimination complaint against Activision Blizzard, in which the company denied a day later. This caused many employees working at the company to either strike or leave to work at another video game company. Even work on World Of Warcraft was halted due to the allegations. Some employees went on social medias to talk about their experience during their time at Activision and it seemed that the environment at the company was mostly sexist and toxic and the internet knew the damage that had been done. The fingers were pointed at Bobby Kotick, the CEO of Activision, who refused to leave and kept on denying what had been accused of him. The Blizzard president, J. Allen Brack, left and even the Senior Vice President too. The director of the upcoming Diablo 4 was fired and many sponsors were pulling out of Activision, leading to the investors to sue Activision Blizzard for denial. 

November came and Bobby Kotick was under fire as new evidence suggested that he was aware of the sexual allegations and he could not be asked to do anything about it. It got even worse when the Wall Street Journal made Activision admit that he even ignored the sexual misconduct that happened during that year. As expected, many employees refused to work and demaned Kotick to resign immediately with over 1,000 people signing a petition for the CEO to leave. Phil Spencer decided to re-evaluate the relationship between Microsoft and Activision. This re-evaluation would come back handy as Spencer & Co. would go ahead and spend the cash on a video game company that was falling in reputation and respect.

18th January 2022. Microsoft buys Activision for $68.7 billion. This deal is set to be finalised next year and will make Microsoft the third biggest gaming company in the world. As of now, we are not unsure what will happen to Bobby Kotick. Many have theorised that he will leave when the acquisition is done. Microsoft are looking to express how they will deal with the sexual harassment claims and maybe they might have bought the company to cleanse the sexist and toxic environment in order to help Activision find themself back on track and make quality games. Imagine a world where the next Call Of Duty games recieves critical acclaim in both story, atmosphere and gameplay? It might happen. On his Twitter accont, Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, believed the aqcuisition "will usher in a new era of gaming that puts players and creators first and makes gaming safe, inclusive, and accessible to all.".

So, now what? Time will tell.

Maybe this will show that the acquisition might improve the Xbox Series X's chances of leapfrogging Sony's PlayStation 5 as the best 9th generation console.

Maybe this will kick Bobby Kotick and his board out of Acitivision.

Maybe this will improve the working environment of the studios with employees feeling safer and happier.

Maybe this will be questioned by the American Congress with some representatives arguing Microsoft's monoplolisation of the video game industry.

Maybe this will allow Activision Blizzard to release quality games from Crash Bandicoot to Starcraft.

Maybe this will get Nintendo to react in a way of jealousy and try to keep the Switch going or fall into a cycle of upsetting their fans that grew up on their games and hardware.

Maybe this will make other developers cautious about the state that their company is on as of now until the time Microsoft comes knocking on their doors.

Maybe this will change the video game industry all together along with what's being called the 'metaverse'.

We will all have to wait to see all of the above is true in a year's time.