On the evening of January 18, Beijing time, a heavy news came from North America: Microsoft announced a $68.7 billion cash acquisition of Activision Blizzard, after the completion of the acquisition, Microsoft will become a behemoth with more than 30 first-party game development studios, and its game revenue is the third in the world, second only to Tencent and Sony.
The deal is expected to close in fiscal year 2023, until which Activision Blizzard will remain independent, and after the acquisition, incumbent CEO Bobby Koitick will remain in office and report to Phil Spencer, head of Xbox's business.
However, the Wall Street Journal believes that after the acquisition is completed, Activision Blizzard's current CEO Bobby Kautik will leave the company after receiving a severance payment of up to $290 million.
Activision Blizzard is in trouble
Activision Blizzard is composed of Activision, Blizzard and King Studio, and its well-known IP includes Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Diablo, Overwatch, StarCraft and Candy Crush Legends, etc. According to its third quarter 2021 financial report, Activision's net income for the quarter fell by 17% year-on-year, and Blizzard and King's monthly activity also declined to varying degrees (13% and 2%).
More importantly, Activision Blizzard has been in trouble for a while in recent times: on the one hand, because of the corporate culture of the "Brotherhood", the scandals of workplace bullying and sexual harassment have been endless; on the other hand, CEO Bobby Kautik is known for his "cost-saving" aggressive attitude within the company, and has repeatedly laid off employees but has taken a much higher salary than employees. The contrast was so displeased that more than 1,000 employees asked him to step down in a signatory manner.
In terms of player reputation, Activision's new Call of Duty: Vanguard has suffered bad reviews due to lack of sincerity; the remakes of Diablo 2 and Warcraft 3 have also made players unhappy because of networking and high-definition material problems; and the release time of Diablo 4 and Overwatch 2 has been delayed again and again.
Activision Blizzard is like a person who is struggling on the water, desperately needing a life-saving straw, at this time, Microsoft appeared. Because of this, the reaction of this acquisition on social networks, in addition to lamenting Microsoft's "banknote ability", most of them have a positive attitude towards this acquisition.
Since the famous sentence "Don't you have a mobile phone?" at the 2018 Blizzard Carnival? "After that, Blizzard has been going downhill in the past few years, and its position in the minds of players has plummeted, which is not the same.
Blizzard is no longer the game company that "Blizzard produces, must be a boutique", and the producers and executives in the company who are slightly famous have left.
In the player's mind, Blizzard has lost its soul and is in dire need of rescue. This time, Microsoft played the role of "White Knight", and everyone believed that after the acquisition, "Blizzard, how bad can he go?" ”
The acquisition may have been launched two years ago
The secrecy of the two sides of the acquisition news is quite good, and Bloomberg only learned of the news a very short time before Microsoft's official announcement. But the acquisition wasn't without warning, for example, in October 2019, Mike Ybarra, vice president of Microsoft's Xbox and PC gaming division, left to join Blizzard as vice president and general manager.
Mike Ybarra has been with Microsoft for more than 20 years, participated in the distribution and related work of the Xbox, Xbox 360 and Xbox One three generations of consoles, has been responsible for the Xbox Live and XGP businesses, and was deeply involved in the Xbox Insider program, and his departure was considered "unusual" at the time.
This situation can be referred to when Microsoft acquired Nokia's mobile phone business, and also "sent" Steven Elop to Nokia as CEO. Mike Ybarra was called a "Trojan Horse" by netizens on social media.
In November 2021, after the Activision Blizzard sex scandal and workplace discrimination incidents were exposed, Xbox head Phil Spencer sent a full-staff email saying that Microsoft "is re-evaluating its relationship with Activision Blizzard, and I and other Xbox executives are deeply disturbed and troubled by the terrible events and behaviors that have occurred [of Activision Blizzard]." ”
Xbox will expand its own library of games
After the acquisition is completed, Microsoft will own all the IP of Activision Blizzard, including Call of Duty and Overwatch, plus the previous acquisition of Bethesda's "Doom" and "German Headquarters", as well as "Halo" acquired from Bungie and "Gears of War" from Epic Games, Microsoft has a total of 6 well-known FPS IP.
Since taking the helm of the Xbox division in 2014, Phil Spencer has been on a "buy-buy-buy" approach, acquiring game development studios such as Mojang, Ninja Theory, Obsidian, InXile, Playground, Undead Labs, and Bethesda, greatly expanding the number of first-party studios.
Under Phil Spencer's helm, Xbox had for the first time the "largest game lineup ever", and the cross-platform strategy and the launch of XGP have won the hearts of players, according to the data released this time, XGP has more than 25 million subscribers worldwide.
Satisfy Microsoft's metaversal ambitions
Microsoft CEO Nadella said on the 19th Beijing time that the acquisition of Activision Blizzard will play a key role in the next step of Microsoft's metaverse development, and he believes that these game IPs will be a good entrance to the metaverse. Some Silicon Valley observers believe that the establishment of the metacosmity requires cloud computing, good software and smart devices, and the real metacosmic platform must be achieved by technology giants, and Microsoft obviously meets such conditions.
After Microsoft's acquisition of Blizzard was completed, with these excellent game IP as reserves, Microsoft was able to build a more powerful metaversic platform, and its imagination space has unlimited possibilities.