Facing Microsoft, which has "money power," Bobby Kotick admits that Activision Blizzard is just a small company.
After the news that Microsoft would buy Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion, the controversial Activision Blizzard CEO had a conversation with English-language technology media VentureBeat about the reasons for the decision to sell the company to Microsoft. Kodic also revealed that Activision Blizzard even considered merging with EA before reaching a deal with Microsoft.
According to Kodic, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer called him to discuss the possibility of buying Activision Blizzard. Kodic said he and Spencer "know each other very well" and have a "good friendship."
Of course, King criticized the friendship between the two company executives for not being enough to broker a multi-billion dollar deal. Why did Activision Blizzard decide to accept the Acquisition of Microsoft? Kodic explained that Activision Blizzard is too small to be competitive enough to attract top talent. But if Activision Blizzard can become part of Microsoft, the appeal to talent will rise dramatically.
"I've never seen such fierce competition, and even in the case of inflated wages, it's still hard to compete for talent... Whether it's Fist, Tencent, Epic, Sony, or Microsoft or EA, too many companies are hiring. Kodic said.
Ironically, in Activision Blizzard and the entire gaming industry, Kodic's own salary may be the most inflated. Consultancy Games One estimates that Kodik's annual revenue will reach $154.6 million in 2020. According to Yahoo Finance, Kodic will also receive $390 million from Activision Blizzard's deal with Microsoft.
On the other hand, it's hard to say whether the gaming industry has been affected by rising employee wages. It has previously been reported that Kodic advocates a "culture of frugality" in the workplace: although Activision Blizzard's profits have repeatedly broken records, employee salaries are notoriously low. Some Activision Blizzard employees revealed that they often skip meals and drink the company's free coffee to alleviate hunger. One employee also said that due to changes in welfare policies such as overtime pay, many colleagues earn even less than they did a decade ago.
Kodic believes activision Blizzard is limited in scale and that it is difficult to compete with the giants. "You might think, oh, Activision is a big company with a lot of resources. But if you compare us to companies with a market capitalization of $20,000 or $3 trillion, you realize that we might be a big game company... But the world has become very different from the past. ”
Previously, Kodic revealed on an investor conference call that it had "considered all possible partners" in order to get more funds and resources for Activision Blizzard. But Kodic explained in his conversation with VentureBeat: "Even if we merge with EA, we won't get what we need to continue to grow in the future." In order to achieve your goals, you must find a strong partner. ”
For the future of Activision Blizzard, Kodic said in an interview that he hopes the company will develop a new game for Guitar Hero and Spyro the Dragon, and add more social features to the match-3 mobile game Candy Legends. He also plans to recruit more employees in the AI and machine learning fields to create a "true Call of Duty cloud experience."
Sources:
Game Grapes compilation finishing