Text | Gamewower
Just a week ago, Take-Two announced plans to buy Zynga for $12.7 billion, the largest merger in the history of the gaming industry.
That record lasted only a week, and on January 18, Microsoft announced that it was acquiring Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion in pure cash, nearly six times the price compared to Zynga's merger.
At such a price, it is difficult not to refresh the record of the largest merger in the history of the game industry, which shows the value and potential of the game industry.
In a conference call following the acquisition announcement, Satya Nadella, Microsoft's chairman and CEO, said: "Gaming is the most dynamic and exciting form of entertainment of all platforms today and will play a key role in the development of metaverse platforms. ”
The acquisition of Activision Blizzard, facing the present and the future, is obviously a double investment by Microsoft.
Expand your content library for the moment
According to Microsoft's official data, Microsoft's most important platform in the game business, Xbox Game Pass, has 25 million subscribers.
Correspondingly, the number of members of Sony's PlayStation Plus has reached 47.4 million by the end of 2020.
The gap between the two sides is also directly reflected in the sales volume of the host.
According to global console sales data released by research institute Ampere Analysis as of the end of September 2021, the total sales of sony PS5 reached 12.8 million units, while Microsoft's Xbox Series X/S sold 7 million units, both of which were launched in November 2020.
The main reason why Sony has been able to suppress Microsoft in this regard is Sony's huge exclusive content, "Uncharted Sea" and "God of War" have brought direct promotion to the sales of PS consoles.
Relevant Sony's financial report data shows that Sony's current number of first-party studios has reached 16, and it is the content provided by these studios for PS that makes PS suppress Xbox.
Microsoft is not without related measures, Microsoft's idea is to acquire the best game companies on the market as much as possible to expand the game library, in 2018 they acquired Obsidian, InXile, in 2020 they acquired B Society, this acquisition of Activision Blizzard is obviously a continuation of their previous strategy, but the amount is much larger than the previous acquisition.
After the acquisition of Activision Blizzard, Activision Blizzard's Call of Duty series, Diablo series, Overwatch, etc. are well-known game IP, and the impact on XGP services is significant. At the same time, this also makes the number of game studios within Microsoft reach 30 at once, greatly exceeding the number of first-party studios in Sony.
The addition of these studios and the addition of some well-known game IPs can directly promote the development of XGP and provide sufficient ammunition for Microsoft.
Future-oriented, metaverse
If investment in game content is an option for Microsoft to face the competition in the global game market, with such a huge amount of money to acquire Activision Blizzard and Microsoft's desire to face the future.
According to Microsoft's external statement, this future is a metaverse, and the addition of Activision Blizzard can better help Microsoft lay out in the vision of the metaverse.
On this point, we believe that it should be divided into two aspects, one is content, and the other is technology.
In terms of content, both the previous "Ready Player One" and last year's "Runaway Player" show us that the game will become the best experience scene in the metaverse.
In the virtual world of the game, there is a complete set of virtual world rules of the process, social system, economic system and so on. This also determines that in a sense, the creation of the meta-universe space is the creation of a large-scale virtual world game, such as the virtual world realized by "Oasis" in Ready Player One.
Therefore, the acquisition of Activision Blizzard, or Activision Blizzard, which is at the forefront of community ecology, will provide positive significance for Microsoft's exploration of metaverse content.
Beyond the content, let's talk about technology.
In the book "Metaverse Token", it is written that among the six major technologies that support the development of the metacosm, one of the game technologies is the game engine, 3D modeling, and real-time rendering.
On August 12 last year, Nvidia revealed through the documentary "Connecting in the Metaverse" that during a speech by CEO Jen-Hsun Huang earlier this year, more than a dozen seconds of images were digital stand-ins produced by omniverse technology platforms.
The digital avatar, or virtual person, will become an indispensable part of the metaverse, it is the key to breaking the gap between reality and virtuality, and in this regard, it is clear that the game industry is ahead of everyone, including film and television.
In April 2020, Epic teamed up with American rapper Travis Scott in Fortnite to stage a "immersive" concert called "Astronomical" on major servers around the world, attracting more than 27.7 million players to watch.
Among them, Epic created a virtual human avatar for Travis Scott, while directly adjusting the entire game world to the stage of this "special" concert. In fact, this is already close to a little bit of the essence of the metaverse.
In September 2021, the official account of Xinhua News Agency released a Weibo about the virtual person "XiaoYi", as the world's first digital astronaut, XiaoYi was jointly created by Xinhua News Agency and Tencent, this character totaled 300,000 faces, of which 100,000 faces were used to express facial hair, and the facial expression system used more than 5,000 Blendshape in addition to traditional bone binding to delicately portray character expressions.
Game technology is an important part of the metaverse, the acquisition of Activision Blizzard will reduce the obstacles for Microsoft's road to the metaverse, in the acquisition case, Activision Blizzard CEO in the elaboration of Activision Blizzard and Microsoft's metaverse planning, which mentioned two points, in addition to content, is talent.
"The competition for diverse talent and the desire for creativity and technical capabilities to meet user expectations has never been more intense, and investments in cloud computing, artificial intelligence and machine learning, more complex data analytics, user interfaces, and user experience capabilities have become more competitive," Kotic said. Our talent and franchises are key components in building a rich metacosm. ”
For example, Activision Blizzard's IW engine, which is a dedicated engine for COD, has significant advantages in environment and character modeling, which can make players of new works feel a more realistic battlefield environment, and with the continuous refinement of character modeling, players have a better experience in combat, driving vehicles, and game systems.
From this point of view, Microsoft's investment and valuation of Activision Blizzard, obviously there is also the accumulation of game technology behind Activision Blizzard, which can accelerate Microsoft's layout in the metaverse.
Game technology is not limited to the metaverse
What exactly can game technology do?
We see that NVIDIA, which is committed to the production of game hardware devices - graphics cards, has opened up the AI computing chip production line through the accumulation of technology, and has achieved great success, becoming the world's top chip manufacturer. At the same time, Unreal and Unity, which were developed as game engines, began a wide range of cross-border applications, becoming the core tools to promote the integration of traditional industries towards digital reality and build digital twins, and in the field of industrial manufacturing, such as civil aviation, automobile manufacturing and other fields, game engines and traditional industrial software are connected and complementary, playing the role of "new industrial software". The sci-fi blockbuster Mandalorian has used Unreal Engine technology built for the game since the first season.
The game's intelligent virtual simulation technology helps with a variety of needs such as flight simulation, collision simulation, wind tunnel simulation, and autonomous driving training.
In addition, the popularity of Pokemon Go has also successfully promoted the explosive growth of AR technology, making AR technology successfully commercial and has a wide range of application scenarios.
Today, we can see a large number of game technology in a number of cross-border areas, behind these cross-border is the game technology as a representative of a new generation of digital content technology, it has high intelligence, high interaction and high realism at the same time, is also a multi-technology synthesis, but also a field full of innovative vitality. There is no doubt that the competitiveness of game technology has become a part of the scientific and technological competition that cannot be ignored.
At the end of the call on the acquisition, Microsoft's CFO mentioned in his final remarks, "Gaming is a category defined by innovation, technology, creativity, and a passionate pursuit to create joy and wonder for gamers." Exciting experiences for everyone on the planet through this combination will drive long-term revenue growth and significant shareholder value. ”
For Microsoft, the acquisition of Activision Blizzard has not only obtained COD, World of Warcraft, Overwatch, and Candy Crush Legends, but also a large number of excellent talents in various fields, and behind these talents is game technology is becoming one of the main driving forces for the development of this information age.