Five aircraft carriers acquired Activision Blizzard, Microsoft launched the banknote capability, and Sony has run out of gas

People live a long time, sure enough, everything can be seen, before the 18th, Yun Youji even put her head in the toilet and could not imagine that Microsoft would buy Activision Blizzard for nearly $70 billion.

On the evening of January 18th, Microsoft and Activision Blizzard announced a acquisition, Microsoft for $68.7 billion to acquire Activision Blizzard and its team, after the completion of the transaction, Activision Blizzard's current games will join XGP, including "World of Warcraft", "Overwatch", "Hearthstone", "Call of Duty", "Diablo" and so on, it is foreseeable that the sequel to these works will also join XGP.

Microsoft's acquisition of game studios will not interfere too much, but in view of the recent series of events, Microsoft promised to reorganize and liquidate the Activision Blizzard team, and after re-evaluating Activision Blizzard's projects and teams, Microsoft will continue to support the IP of Activision Blizzard's excellent teams and continue to create new games.

Although it was officially announced that AFTER the acquisition, CEO Bobby will continue to stay in office and report to Spencer, CEO of Microsoft's gaming business, there are still many people who believe that after the acquisition is completely completed, CEO Bobby Kotick will leave.

Of course, he himself has made hundreds of millions of dollars in this acquisition, and if he really leaves his job, he can get hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, he has made money, Activision Blizzard is less of a scandal-ridden boss, a win-win situation.

Co-author Phil Spencer said last November to re-evaluate his relationship with Activision Blizzard, referring to being activision Blizzard's dad.

Just last week, R Star parent take-two just announced a huge $12.7 billion acquisition of Zynga, a new high in the game industry, within a few days, this record was broken by Microsoft at several times the price, and compared with the previous "may end the console war" Sony spent $750 million to acquire third-party exclusive rights rumors, sigh.

Interestingly, CEO Mike Ybarra, who worked at Microsoft for 22 years and then moved to Blizzard, has only worked at Blizzard for two years before returning to Microsoft, and there is reason to suspect that he is the famous Seattle Microsoft and Xbox senior double agent "Pangolin".

Many people may not have any concept of this $68.7 billion, here is a comparison chart of the market capitalization of major game companies, everyone feel it.

Microsoft's net profit in 2021 is $61.271 billion, that is to say, in addition to Nintendo, if Microsoft wants to, it will take two years of profits to package all game companies such as EA and Ubisoft, as long as these companies have any problems.

Suppose a 3A game needs 100 million US dollars to develop, 68.7 billion US dollars is enough for Microsoft to build a 3A a week for more than ten consecutive years; the US Ford-class aircraft carrier costs 13 billion US dollars, which is enough to buy 5 aircraft carriers.

Affected by this news, Activision Blizzard's stock price directly jumped higher that day, rising from more than sixty dollars to more than eighty dollars, closing up 25.88%, and the stock price rose by a quarter. Sony, another game console manufacturer, directly fell 7.2% in share price.

It is reasonable to say that the favorite game company was acquired, for players is "lost to the family", but in the face of Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard, not only investors are optimistic, even the majority of the white is also cheering and rushing to tell each other, and even foreign players have specially run to the front of Microsoft to bow in salute.

Why sauce purple

Since the first half of last year, Activision Blizzard's negative public opinion has not been broken. California government departments sued Activision Blizzard for gender discrimination and sexual harassment of female employees, and as the investigation deepened, more and more game developers were implicated, and the company's CEO Bobby Kotick was also questioned by players.

The impact of public opinion on Activision Blizzard is huge, a number of game media announced that they will no longer publish Activision Blizzard related news, players denounced Activision Blizzard and asked the CEO to get out, and there are many employees running away or striking in protest.

Scandals continue to break out, employees continue to leave, and the development of multiple game projects of Activision Blizzard has come to a standstill, and Overwatch 2 and Diablo 4 seem to be far away. For Activision Blizzard, some netizens only hope that they can sell their IP to a more reliable developer before they die.

Microsoft's acquisition completely revitalized the bad situation of Activision Blizzard. With Microsoft's investment, Activision Blizzard will certainly not be bad money, and under Microsoft's management and intervention, poor team management problems will also be improved to some extent.

Then, whether it is "Overwatch 2" or "Diablo 4", which looks like it is about to collapse, it should be successfully completed. If you refer to Microsoft's attitude towards "Age of Empires", maybe classic IP such as "Torture and Killing Prototype" can also be revived.

It is already at the bottom, how to go is up, and it has been acquired by angel investors like Microsoft who do not interfere much in operations, and for Activision Blizzard, no matter how it is seen, it is better than the current situation.

Sony has run out of breath

The impact of this acquisition is immeasurable, before Microsoft acquired B, if Sony has lost its breath or just ridicule, then it can really be said that it is out of breath now.

Throughout his PS4 career, the highest-selling games in PS4 have always been third-party titles. In addition to R Star's "Give Him Love" and "Red Dead Redemption 2", it is also the COD series. In the United States, where PS4 console games have the highest sales, the top ten CODs account for four (three of which rank in the top five), and Sony's first-party exclusive works only have "God of War 4" and "Marvel Spider-Man" sales can hold off the façade slightly.

Incidentally, COD's latest work, Call of Duty 18: Vanguard, won the PlayStation and Xbox dual-platform game sales championship last year, and COD's status on the console is still unshakable.

In the PS5 generation, Sony's CEO focused on the European and American markets, Sony's Japanese studio disbanded, and even the key settings of the controller were in line with European and American players. However, now Microsoft has successively acquired B and Activision Blizzard, holding the favorite COD, old roll, fallout and other games of European and American players in their hands, which is equivalent to directly hitting Sony's seven inches.

If Sony acquires Activision Blizzard, then they may let Activision Blizzard's games exclusive, but Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard, even if he does not engage in XBOX exclusive, as long as Microsoft's entire Sony "exclusive", or COD first into XGP, PS5 version of the price of $70 is not discounted, after the completion of the game can also see the Xbox logo, it is enough to kill the current Sony.

From Yun Youji's point of view, Sony's defeat in this generation has been decided. On the open, Sony's old game port PC is certainly not as multi-platform as XGP console PC, and there is no XGP service that spans different platforms; in terms of game sales, Sony's several highest-selling games are not as good as the "North American CF" COD.

If Sony has a stable super IP like Nintendo Pokémon, Zelda, and Mario, then he still has the power to return to the exclusive state of the game, but unfortunately he does not.

end

Of course, nearly 100 billion US dollars of investment, just to win the host war of this generation is obviously a little small, the entire Sony Group in 2020 net profit is only 5 billion US dollars, Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard money is equivalent to Sony Group's 14 years of profits, just to beat Sony's PS5, a bit of nuclear bomb fried mosquito meaning.

According to the official statement, Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard this time is for their meta-universe, and if it crushes Sony along the way, it is just a deliberate move.

Many people may not understand the concept of metaverse, here is too time-consuming to explain, in a word, it is probably Microsoft wants to be an oasis in "Ready Player One", so that players can live in the virtual world created by Microsoft.

In Yun Youji's view, the concept of the metaverse is indeed very beautiful, but it is a bit premature to talk about this now, compared to building a metacosm, activision Blizzard can bring benefits to Microsoft at the moment is real.

Many people may think that Although Microsoft's 70 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard can hit Sony, it is also a broken bone, which is a loss-making transaction. If you really look at it that way, you would be very wrong.

Although Activision Blizzard has been plagued by scandals before, with their game products, Activision Blizzard still has a stable net profit of billions of dollars per year, and the acquisition will not cause too much burden to Microsoft.

Not only that, with games such as COD and World of Warcraft, Activision Blizzard has a huge user base, and Microsoft is currently focusing on the XGP service, so that Activision Blizzard products can enter XGP, which can divert a large number of players.

Microsoft has been implementing a multi-platform strategy, mobile games are also their more concerned areas, Activision's mobile game studio King's "Candy Fun" is also one of the most popular mobile games of all time, the acquisition of Activision is also helpful for Microsoft to enter the mobile game industry.

In addition to the above, the acquisition of Activision Blizzard has many advantages, so to speak, even if it does not engage in meta-universe, this acquisition is definitely worth the money.

The above content is only a deduction based on the existing situation, even if you buy a large company such as B and Activision Blizzard now, the specific impact will not be reflected until many years later, such as "Starry Sky" and "Diablo 4" and other new works.

At the very least, Sony could sit up in a coffin for a while before Microsoft bought the T2 and bought the IP for his love and Red Dead Redemption.