Microsoft announced that it will acquire Activision Blizzard in full cash for $95 per share, including Activision Blizzard's net cash, with a transaction value of $68.7 billion (about 436.4 billion yuan). It will be the largest acquisition in Microsoft's history.
The acquisition, which is at a premium of about 45 percent and an equity valued at about $74 billion, has been approved by microsoft and Activision Blizzard's boards of directors, according to calculations. After the transaction is completed, Microsoft will become the world's third-largest game company after Tencent and Sony.
The so-called stone stirred up thousands of waves, Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard news came out, not only Activision Blizzard surged by more than 37% before the disk, the news also instantly occupied the headlines of major media and set off a lot of discussion in the global game industry field and many console gamers, even passers-by who did not understand the game at all will sigh a microsoft "banknote ability" is strong.
Microsoft's net operating cash flow for fiscal 2020-2021 was $76.74 billion, a $68.7 billion expense that means Microsoft is spending about 11 months of operating net cash flow, and the transaction is also the largest acquisition in Microsoft's history.
In fact, Microsoft has been in the game industry for a long time, as early as the turn of the century to establish and launch its video game brand - Xbox, with Nintendo and Sony in the field of console games, in recent years is more in the field of the game industry frequent action.
Judging from Microsoft's actions in the past two years, before acquiring Activision Blizzard, it first took the Parent Company of Bethesda for $7.5 billion, obtained the ownership of game IP such as "The Elder Scrolls", "Fallout", "Unjust Murder Machine", "Evil Possessed", and spent $2.5 billion in September 2021 to take the classic sandbox game "Minecraft" development team Mojang and its own "Minecraft" brand into the pocket. Blizzard, King Studio and its franchises of games, including World of Warcraft, Diablo, Overwatch, Call of Duty, and Candy Crush, are packaged into their own game ecosystem.
If the acquisition plan is successfully implemented, and Microsoft does not carry out a large-scale split and reorganization of Activision Blizzard's organizational structure after the acquisition, microsoft's game development department will have more than 30 studios, covering almost all mainstream games on the market, which is enough for Microsoft to take advantage of the game market competition.
Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard is actually eyeing the IP influence of its games and its own game production and distribution capabilities. From the perspective of the game market, Blizzard's Call of Duty series can be said to be at the top of the US game sales list.
According to the data released by the US NDF for the first 11 months of 2021, "Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War" has been in the top three sales for 8 consecutive months, although the ranking has declined in September and October, but "Call of Duty: Vanguard" was released and reached the top of the sales throne in November, and its huge influence is evident.
For Activision Blizzard, this acquisition actually gave it a chance to be reborn. Previously, Activision Blizzard's Blizzard division was mired in a sexist and sexual harassment scandal, and Activision Blizzard's stock price plunged nearly 46% from a high of $104 per share to $56.
Microsoft's acquisition not only enriches its own game content camp, but also enhances its game publishing and e-sports production capabilities, and is equivalent to pulling Activision Blizzard to get out of the quagmire of the Blizzard scandal. Microsoft's strong capital injection can make Activision Blizzard more focused on putting the focus back on game content development and production, and some of the projects that are rotten may be put back on the agenda. After the two completed the acquisition, the final pride was still the global players.
Text/Beijing Youth Daily reporter Wang Lei