Microsoft's acquisition of Activision caused a stir in the technology and gaming industry. The news of the acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft Gaming seems to have made Sony PlayStation start to get nervous. Sony hopes that after Microsoft completes the acquisition of Activision Blizzard, a number of game titles made by Activision can still appear on the Playstation platform.
“Until this transaction closes, Activision Blizzard and Microsoft Gaming will continue to operate independently. Once the deal is complete, the Activision Blizzard business will report to me as CEO of Microsoft Gaming,” said Phil Spencer, CEO of Microsoft Gaming.
This statement indicates that any “contractual agreements” that Activision Blizzard had prior to its sale will be liquidated under a new “agreement with Microsoft”. Microsoft bosses say that the company plans to bring as many Activision games as possible to Xbox Games. There are also reports that the tech giant will only launch Activision games exclusively on Xbox consoles. The company has made this move after the acquisition of the previous game developer. This condition clearly makes Sony, especially in the PlayStation division nervous. Activision Blizzard is the developer of a number of big-name games, such as Call of Duty, Warcraft, Diablo, Overwatch, and so on. Sony is concerned that some of these major game titles will be available exclusively on Xbox game consoles and will no longer be available on PlayStation following Microsoft Gaming's acquisition of Activision Blizzard. But a statement from Spencer will make Sony and also PlayStation owners can breathe a little easier.
"I just want to say to the players who play Activision Blizzard games on the Sony PS platform, we have no intention of taking the community away from the platform, and we remain committed to this point," said Spencer.
Microsoft Acquires Activision for USD 68.7 billion
Microsoft acquires game and entertainment publisher Activision Blizzard for USD 68.7 billion. The acquisition was made as Microsoft's efforts to build a virtual world or metaverse. Specifically, the acquisition value issued by Microsoft was USD 95 for each share and if calculated in cash transactions, it was worth USD 68.7 billion. The acquisition is said to accelerate the growth of Microsoft's gaming business for mobile, PC, console and cloud products, and will provide the building blocks for the metaverse.
“Games are the most dynamic and exciting category of entertainment across all platforms today and will play a key role in the development of the platform metaverse,” said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
Satya added that the company's leadership will invest a large amount to develop metaverse-based game content.
“We are investing heavily in world-class content, community and cloud to usher in a new era of gaming that puts players and content creators first and makes gaming safe, inclusive and accessible to everyone,” said Satya.
The future of Activision and Blizzard games is likely to be similar to that of Bethesda games. After Microsoft bought Zenimax, it retained its time exclusivity for Deahtloop and Ghostwire. As planned last year, Quake remastered launched on PlayStation and Bethesda is still supporting the PlayStation version of Elder Scrolls Online with new content and DLC. However, future games like Starfield and The Elder Scrolls VI will be exclusive to Xbox and Windows. Activision Blizzard's current projects for the PlayStation include this year's and next year's Call of Duty games, namely Overwatch 2 and Diablo IV. Those games will probably still launch with the PlayStation version.
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