After facing more regulatory scrutiny than it expected, Microsoft has closed the biggest gaming deal in history.
Activision Blizzard and all its associated franchises are, in fact, owned by Microsoft. The announcement of the partnership in January 2022 marked the beginning of a long journey for the Xbox manufacturer to reach this point. Despite the Federal Trade Commission’s ongoing objections, Microsoft fought with regulators, made guarantees regarding Call of Duty, and licensed cloud gaming content. However, the $68.7 billion deal has closed.
This is Microsoft’s and the gaming sector’s biggest acquisition to date. Activision Blizzard will receive a hefty $95 per share from Microsoft, which represents a significant premium over the stock price in early 2022. Controversial Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard, will step down after Microsoft has finished consuming his business, but he won’t go away without something. On his way out the door, Kotick will reportedly receive a $400 million payout.
We gained a previously unattainable perspective of the video game industry as a result of the legal wrangling. Microsoft has long viewed itself as the loser in the console battles since it has sold less consoles than Sony or Nintendo over the course of the last three generations, according to documents from the FTC’s case. Microsoft just acquired ZeniMax (and Bethesda along with it) and is now integrating Activision Blizzard because it believes that its lack of exclusive content is the issue.
Microsoft had to settle things with Sony in order to appease authorities. This latter party has expressed open concern that Microsoft would remove Call of Duty from other platforms, which would significantly reduce its revenue. In the end, Microsoft consented to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation for at least ten years. By awarding 10-year cloud gaming contracts to smaller businesses like Nware and Boosteroid, it also at eased European authorities. Also, it granted Ubisoft the majority of the cloud gaming rights for Activision Blizzard material.
The Game Pass team claims that now that the agreement has been reached, it can start the process of adding Activision Blizzard titles to Microsoft’s subscription service. The team assures that there will be updates in the upcoming months, but this process won’t happen overnight. Nonetheless, you can expect that upcoming Activision Blizzard titles will be available on Game Pass right now.
In a technical sense, the FTC is still fighting. It still has the intention of suing the corporation administratively. Theoretically, this may compel Microsoft to sell some of its holdings or partially undo the transaction. That doesn’t seem very probable, though, given the FTC’s previous failures to convince a judge to halt the deal.