Microsoft is acquiring Activision Blizzard in shocking deal

After months of controversial news surrounding Activision Blizzard, Microsoft has stepped in and acquired the company. As announced in an official press release from Xbox chief Phil Spencer, Microsoft plans to buy the company behind franchises like World of Warcraft, Diablo, Overwatch, Call of Duty, and more. “This acquisition will accelerate the growth in Microsoft’s gaming business across mobile, PC, console, and cloud and will provide building blocks for the metaverse,” Microsoft states in the release. The deal is rumored to be valued at $68.7 billion. If accurate, that would make it the largest acquisition in video game history by a significant margin. The record was just set by Take Two when it announced intentions to acquire Zynga for $12.7 billion. Microsoft already made its immediate plans concerning Activision Blizzard apparent, confirming that it will offer as many new and old Activision Blizzard games as it can within Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass. It also said that the acquisition of Activision Blizzard’s franchises will accelerate its plans for Cloud Gaming and will continue to be able to be enjoyed on a variety of platforms. This is Microsoft’s second big acquisition after the company bought Bethesda in 2021. It also makes Microsoft the world’s third-largest gaming company by revenue, behind Tencent and Sony. In terms of the controversial storm that Microsoft has to deal with over this acquisition, the company states: “We deeply value individual studio cultures. We also believe that creative success and autonomy go hand in hand with treating every person with dignity and respect. We hold all teams, and all leaders, to this commitment. We’re looking forward to extending our culture of proactive inclusion to the great teams across Activision Blizzard.” Microsoft also confirms that the acquisition isn’t quite finished just yet. Until this transaction closes at an undisclosed time, Activision Blizzard and Microsoft Gaming will continue to operate independently.
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 launched this week on Xbox, PC, and Xbox Game Pass, but players are reporting a lot of performance issues, including long queue times or not being able to play at all, with some players stuck at 97% when loading in. In a video posted Wednesday, Asobo Studios apologized for the launch, explaining that it “underestimated” the demand on its servers. “We knew the excitement was high for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, but frankly, we completely underestimated how high, and it has really overwhelmed our infrastructure,” series head Jorg Neumann said. “We’re really sorry, we want to apologize.”
Blizzard has officially announced how it’s bringing 6v6 back to Overwatch, and it’s definitely more than what we expected. Beyond just bringing the old ways back to the game after removing them for Overwatch 2, Blizzard has announced a new event called Overwatch Classic that will reflect what the game was like with Overwatch 1.0. Before Ana and Sombra, before defense and tank were one class, and before added game modes, Overwatch redefined the hero shooter and conquered the genre for years (although that might be changing soon with Marvel Rivals and Deadlock on the horizon). Over time, the developers have fine-tuned the heroes, changed a lot of their move sets, and introduced changes in an attempt to give all classes a chance and to remove the possibility of players building unbalanced metas.
The former president of game developer Arkane has come out to condemn Microsoft’s closure of Arkane Austin earlier this year, saying that it “was not a good decision.” Microsoft acquired Arkane parent company ZeniMax Media for $7.5 billion in 2021, which also brought studios like Bethesda Softworks and subsidiaries like id Software (Doom), Tango Gameworks (Hi-Fi Rush), and MachineGames (Indiana Jones and the Great Circle) under the Xbox umbrella. However, Microsoft shut down Arkane Austin along with Tango, Mighty Doom’s Alpha Dog Studios, and internal development studio Roundhouse Games earlier this year.