Another high-profile video game company acquisition is going to happen soon. Microsoft is set to acquire Activision Blizzard Inc, making it the largest deal in the video game industry by far. The nearest number to this will be the $12.7 billion Take-Two’s acquisition of the mobile game company Zynga that was announced more than a week before. Microsoft acquires Activision Blizzard
With this acquisition, Microsoft will now become the third-largest gaming company by revenue across the world, just behind Tencent and Sony. Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft has said, “Gaming is the most dynamic and exciting category in entertainment across all platforms today and will play a key role in the development of metaverse platforms.” He also told that “We’re investing deeply in world-class content, community, and the cloud to usher in a new era of gaming that puts players and creators first and makes gaming safe, inclusive, and accessible to all.”
When Candy Crush and CoD become your actual job. Microsoft x Activision Blizzard. 🎮❤️📱https://t.co/nw4cLoaoTB pic.twitter.com/QPGt9DC2jF
— Microsoft (@Microsoft) January 18, 2022
Microsoft’s offer in this deal of $95 per share is at a premium of 45% as the shares of Activision were trading at $89.55 in trading on Friday. From this, we can see that Microsoft is eager to continue being a part of the expanding gaming scene. The company has already made many successful high-profile acquisitions since way back in 2014 when it bought Mojang, the developer of Minecraft, for $2.5 billion. It had also acquired Bethesda in 2020 for $7.5 billion. Now with Activision Blizzard, the company will be looking to expand beyond its XBOX console titles to mobiles and other platforms.
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Microsoft has estimated that more than 3 billion people play games across different platforms and gaming is now the largest and fastest-growing form of entertainment. With this acquisition, Microsoft will be able to expand its gaming metaverse across PC, console, mobile, and cloud platforms.
We are joining the @Xbox family.
Learn what this means for our iconic games and player communities: https://t.co/abPxlb37kA pic.twitter.com/Z8sVgsjScz
— Activision Blizzard (@ATVI_AB) January 18, 2022
Microsoft will now be the proprietor of popular gaming series and franchises like StarCraft, Overwatch, Diablo, Candy Crush, Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, and much more. Thus, with games related to multiple genres and platforms, Microsoft’s gaming business is bound to expand tremendously in the future.
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