Activision Blizzard’s worst state has crossed a sweet moment in Redmond, completing a historic business move. Microsoft buy Activision Blizzard. Buy Call of Duty. world of warcraft devil. starship. overlook. Tony Hawk. Candy Crush. Crash Bandicoot. Guitar Hero. spyro. hearth stone. sekiro. And more. Well-informed journalists and media barely had a few minutes of fame, as what they presented as an opportunity became official shortly afterwards. Nearly $70,000 million for the largest purchase in the industry’s history. A movement that if it could, it was now.
At the best time for Microsoft and at the worst possible time for a Activision Blizzard with almost irreparable damage to his image and a growing sense of detachment from his biggest fans. It is at this point where the two destinies intersect. Phil Spencer said they would re-evaluate the relationship with them after the Kotick and corporate scandals. Wow, they have.
It’s not a purchase to rob other consoles of games, but to reinforce the message and business model: Cloud, Game Pass, play wherever you want
The purchase of Activision Blizzard by means of Microsoft raises a lot of questions, but while the most basic is already being discussed on networks (will Call of Duty and Diablo be exclusive?), the reality is that the scope of this acquisition is much wider. It’s not about whether the games stop coming to PlayStation or Switch, but about broadening the horizon to what the company has been saying for a long time. It’s about driving cloud gaming wherever we are, about a Game Pass getting another bag of top-tier games that continue to expand their business model. The message is not “Call of Duty is not on your console”, which I doubt it will; the message is that “with Game Pass you have it from day one at no extra cost; next to this other hundred and something”.
So, that of Microsoft movement should not be placed in the context of Console War and exclusives, but in the concept of expanding Play Anywhere. From business model. They say in the statement: “The fantastic sagas of Activision Blizzard will accelerate our plans with the game in the cloud, allowing more people in more places around the world to join the Xbox community with phones, tablets, laptops and others. devices they already have. It is the extension of the ecosystem. And it’s not new.
If your idea is to be able to play streaming from an app installed on the TV, like Netflix does, you can do better with Activision and Bethesda than without
On June 10, Phil Spencer defined his strategy in a press briefing: stop seeing hardware as a barrier and democratize video games “from and wherever you want”. Cloud and Game Pass go hand in hand on the roadmap and this reinforces both pillars. We have long seen this as possible but far away, although it seems less and less far away. If you need to succeed with the game in the cloud, playing with an app installed on your Smart TV as if you had Netflix, you certainly have more options for doing it with Activision, Bethesda and the others than without. That’s what they think Microsoft. And they don’t seem to be wrong.
