On January 18, 2022, a piece of acquisition news shocked the world, that is, Microsoft announced the acquisition of Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion in all-cash, and Xbox official media announced this important information. This is the largest cash acquisition time in Microsoft's history, and it has also created a record for the largest acquisition in the game industry. Different gamers have shown different views on this acquisition, some people think that this acquisition is a strong combination of Microsoft and Activision Blizzard, two leaders in different fields, which will promote the further development of the game industry; some people think that Activision Blizzard after many mergers and reorganizations has already gone downhill, it is no longer the unique, only boutique Blizzard of the year, the attitude towards players has also taken a sharp turn, plus it has been constantly nibbling on the old capital, and there is no new IP to attract players, and it is normal to be acquired.
Intuitively speaking, Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard is to prepare for the layout of the meta-universe, after all, Microsoft has its own hardware platform, Activision Blizzard has a huge player base of "Overwatch", "World of Warcraft", "Call of Duty", "StarCraft", "Diablo" and other world-renowned IP games, which can further consolidate and enhance their own market position and significantly increase the number of players, and the combination of software and hardware can allow Microsoft to better promote the development of games, streaming media and metaversics. But this premise is that Activision Blizzard can be normally acquired by Microsoft, and it can also be normal for Microsoft to continuously launch new games.
Let's not talk about whether the acquisition will be yellow, from the perspective of Microsoft and Activision Blizzard's respective game development, both sides have not had any new works in recent years, and internal rectification will be involved after the combination, which means that the merged Microsoft will not have new works launched for a long time, combined with Microsoft's previous experience of acquiring other game studios, Microsoft is unlikely to have new heavyweight IP games launched, and this is probably the reason why Microsoft's stock price has been declining recently.
But for most gamers, including themselves, the biggest worry is that Microsoft is likely to develop some or change Activision Blizzard's popular IP games to platform exclusive, which will greatly boost the sales of Microsoft's own hardware products, such as XBOX, but it is not friendly to players on other platforms.
In general, the acquisition is normal operation for the rich Microsoft, the question is whether it can launch a new heavy IP game after the acquisition, Activision Blizzard is good or bad by Microsoft can only wait for time to verify, as long as Microsoft does not engage in platform exclusive games, it is still a good comrade.