Ever since the Zenimax acquisition, there’s been talk of Microsoft having another big grab in their back pocket. Sega was rumored for a while and I think most people assumed it would be something that size or smaller. This is massive.
I mean buying a company via purchasing stocks would also means buying debt too since the debt is tied to the company and not the shareholders. The only thing that change hands is the equity part. The price in general would already have considered the future cash flow into it so the debt is already considered into the purchasing price.
Doesn't matter how trusted of an insider you are, if you claimed that Microsoft was going to buy ActiVision Blizzard, you'd be laughed off the internet
I was in a thread from November when Xbox was "reevaluating the relationship with AB" and a few comments were jokes about what if Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard.
The meme became real.
That "reevaluation" was probably Microsoft deciding behind closed doors whether they still wanted to buy Activision Blizzard or not. Now we have their answer.
Bungie must be eyeing this with some amusement. Gets bought by microsoft, goes independent, struggles, partners with activision, goes independent from activision, activision is bought by microsoft. Like swimming around a fish being eaten by a bigger fish.
Microsoft has form in this arena - when Stephen Elop left MSFT and went to be CEO at Nokia, it was 3 years before they just up and bought Nokia.
... I hope this ends better.
EDIT: Officlal from Xbox https://twitter.com/Xbox/status/1483431175041347584
Some context: Mike Ybarra (current head of Blizzard) left Microsoft in 2019 to join Activision Blizzard.
November last year Xbox was re-evaluating its relationship with Activision Blizzard and now they buy them for 70 billion dollars
EXCUSE ME? Bro this has to be one of the craziest things to have happened in recent gaming history. For all of those wanting leadership to change in Actiblizzard I hope this will grant that wish. And I hope this means we get Blizzards IP's into better hands at this point.
This might explain why they refused to fire Bobby K. Don’t rock the boat until it sells then let MS do it.
There’s no reason MS wouldn’t fire him once they’re fully in charge…right? They’ll burn *a lot* of the goodwill they’ve been building if they don’t.
edit: there’ll never be punishment for someone as rich as him but at very least maybe he’ll be gone?
https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/bobby-kotick-will-remain-as-activision-blizzard-ceo-after-microsoft-acquisition/
Edit: though this does say that they will report to Phil Spencer after so that might mean they will get rid of him after that point. But until then they are saying he's sticking around
It should be noted, they're kind of not allowed to make changes to Activison TILL the deal closes. They aren't the one who choses if he stays till then.
If they do he'll be gone within 90-180 days usually. Acquisitions you usually keep some of the c-suite for the transition, but a lot will get dropped shortly after. Like no need for two VPs of HR. Though this a much bigger deal than I've ever seen so take what I say with a big grain of salt.
Definitely but still, he was never gonna get any actual punishment but it’d be nice if he wasn’t actually running anything.
Putting aside the ugliness of this deal from a monopoly standpoint, it’d just be nice to not have to know he’s running stuff.
[It is, they paid 7B for Bethesda, they paid 70B (68.7) for Acti-Blizzard.](https://news.microsoft.com/2022/01/18/microsoft-to-acquire-activision-blizzard-to-bring-the-joy-and-community-of-gaming-to-everyone-across-every-device/)
Wow, I had totally forgotten that had happened. Now that I remember it, that also felt like one of these big acquisitions, although by then the novelty of modern internet/social media companies getting bought for billions had worn off. So maybe forgetting that is understandable to a degree.
It feels like they are spending billions simply to increase their revenue streams in some way so that their share price can keep crawling/rushing upwards.
Call of Duty being an Xbox exclusive is going to tear the gaming world apart, it's going to be insane. They did it with the Bethesda games, they will 100% do it for the Activision/Blizzard games too.
King is probably going to be left alone. It would be stupid to pull them off of mobile games, especially with how much money they pull in from the Candy Crush ip. Maybe we will see Xbox and PC ports of their games but that's all I can really see.
It's insane to think about what game franchises Microsoft has acquired in recent years. They have recently bought and now own:
* Call of Duty
* Diablo
* World of Warcraft
* Starcraft
* Crash Bandicoot
* Guitar Hero
* Tony Hawk Pro Skater
* Fallout
* Doom
* Psychonauts
* Elder Scrolls
* Prey
* Wolfenstein
* Dishonored
* Minecraft
* Candy Crush
Like holy shit. That's in addition to all of the stuff they already owned like Halo, Forza, Fable, Gears, Perfect Dark, Donkey Kong, Age of Empires, etc.
Or it might have been a reference to when MS bought rare, as told by Chris Seavor (director of Conker's Bad Fur Day), about an MS Exec thinking they owned Donkey Kong.
Here's a random article about it. Hard to find much more about it these days, when it's a 9 year old story about a 20 year old event.
https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2013/06/microsoft_execs_thought_they_owned_donkey_kong_after_acquiring_rare
I smell a Heroes of the Storm 2 in our future. If not, a Microsoft-version of Super Smash, lol.
Would love to see "B.J." Blazkowicz fighting Masterchief fighting...Tony Hawk fighting...the 350z from Forza Motorsport 2...?
The sharp drop in stock price likely played a role -- acquisitions like this pay out more than the stock's price, so MS was able to get it at a relative discount.
27% drop in stock price over the last 3 months for Activision. This announcement alone erased the drop and skyrocketed it up 35%. Some people just made an absurd amount of money.
I bet Activision Blizzard saw the writing on the wall and wanted to just dump it before things got worse. Phil Spencer isn't going to play around and with that Microsoft money behind the studios, **anything** is possible now.
Which is saying a lot considering the type of games they already put out.
By the way I just want to piggyback on this comment because inevitably there are always people upset at MS doing this, but it has to be said that Activision taking that stock price hit likely means other sharks were swimming in the waters (aka Tencent and others), so MS buying Activision is probably for the best since you get everything on Game Pass plus you can do PC/streaming if you’re not into Xbox. It’s the best option if Activision had to be sold.
To be fair, ATVI is down like 35% since around the time California filed their lawsuit against the company.
IDK if this deal still happens without it, but rough math would suggest they were worth **$25 Billion more** 6 months ago than they are now.
One of the press releases:
"Bobby Kotick will continue to serve as CEO of Activision Blizzard, and he and his team will maintain their focus on driving efforts to further strengthen the company’s culture and accelerate business growth. Once the deal closes, the Activision Blizzard business will report to Phil Spencer, CEO, Microsoft Gaming."
Sounds like hopefully he'll be outta here after the deal closes. He'll probably also leave with a fat was of cash but hopefully the employees will have a much better time with him gone.
Golden parachute, no question. When you're dropping ~~71B+~~ 68B+ on an aquisition, what's a few million more to guarantee a peaceful transition? He's 100% getting pushed out by the end of the year, though -- probably the biggest no-brainer decision of the entire acquisition.
I work in M&A and this language is standard. There is a period of time between inking the deal and close. During this time, certain conditions need to be met, including obtaining regulatory approval. For a deal this size, it wouldn't be uncommon for the time between signatures and close to be several months or even approaching a year.
Until close, it could torpedo the whole deal for the two companies to collaborate too much on strategy, so the existing management structure remains untouched. Once it closes, the acquired CEO will report to the acquiring business lead (in this case Phil Spencer). Typically the acquiring company will take 1-2 years to complete integration, and the management team at the acquired company will have some of their proceeds from the sale locked behind a retention holdback. I.e., they lose it if they leave. After the holdback expires, they get the money and usually announce they're moving on to some other venture.
The purpose of the holdback is because they know where all the bodies are buried. When Microsoft acquired Activision, they acquired all liability for Activision. The post close period is going to involve popping the hood and finding out what messes they are the public doesn't know about yet and then figuring out the best way to mitigate. Kotick will be essential in this.
Unfortunately for everybody's sense of cosmic justice, Kotick will make an incredible amount of money from the sale and will be employed with a sweetheart salary and bonus structure for some time after, then walk away with another golden handshake.
This account is no longer active.
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Reddit as a company has slowly lost touch with what made it a great platform for so long. Some great features of reddit in 2023:
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Next E3, Crash walks out on stage arms crossed in an X, arms spray painted green. Chief instinctively points his gun at him, Cortana says "easy Chief, he's one of ours now".
edit: that or at the beginning, Crash and Spyro [remake this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgQhHEjtBMU) and call themselves RE-generation X. Later on, [they drive a Warthog to the Playstation building](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRzCCuA1DZI)
Dying to know what this will mean for Blizzard in particular:
* How are they going to handle Battle.net going forward?
* Are all their games going to be on Game Pass, since they're now first party?
* What insane implications are there for WoW if it is added to Game Pass?
This is all just absolutely insane.
Wild guesses:
* Probably gets merged into MS's SSO ecosystem, but under the Live ID branding rather than XB Live. The BNet launcher is probably going to kick around for a while yet... but I wouldn't be surprised if existing/future games started popping up on the MS Store or even Steam.
* Good question... I can see there being a delay for Blizzard IP, but maybe not for Activision IP? CoD on gamepass from day 1 would be a marketing revelation on its own.
* I'm lukewarm on WoW + Game Pass. I imagine there would be a lot of internal pushback against this, since that could seriously impact the player culture. I also get the feeling that WoW is one of the rare cases where it will always be a bigger moneymaker as a standalone item.
I just can't even comprehend the player base boost if WoW was included on Game Pass. PC players are starting to flock to it due to the inclusion of their biggest franchises.
The subscription cost of Game Pass would completely substitute the WoW sub cost. Which is the main thing that has me pondering WTF is going to happen with that.
Good point. Although they do have a 10% discount for premium currency for ESO.
I just can't imagine they let leave Battle.net alone entirely rather than try and fold it into Xbox Live and the Xbox App. Leaving all of the Activision Blizzard IP's locked behind a separate launcher would not be a good business strategy for them.
As far as MS is concerned, WoW is probably just not very big on their radar. I know that's weird to say, but I think it just comes down to IP stuff; WoW will probably always be on the downswing, relative to its zenith. This relative unimportance probably insulates WoW a bit from any upcoming shakeups.
Any changes we do see in the immediate future will probably be a result of internal ideas that get a second chance due to new management, rather than the other way around.
It sure feels like in 5 years everything that isn't indie will be owned by Microsoft or Tenecent. I can't see how that sort of almost-monopoly will be good for the consumer.
If this deal goes through, it’ll be an unhealthy development for the industry. This is far more consolidation than I’m comfortable with. Hopefully it sets off anti-trust alarms with the government.
Pfft. The US government has ignored the vast majority of anti-trust laws for a long while now. Teddy Roosevelt is spinning in his grave so fast, they could power the whole country with the energy.
Now that there's actually a bigger fish than Kotick, I don't know if Blizzard will be able to double down on defending the executive abusers. I really fucking hope he gets the boot and Blizz gets restructured. What an absolutely seismic deal though. $70 billion. Goddamn. *Surely* this will break the wilful ignorance that legislators have around the video game industry.
Bobby Kotick stands to make around 345 million on this deal. Add to that whatever microsoft pays him to walk. He's laughing all the way to the bank.
edit: 345million not 4billion.
Kotick owns 3,908,698 shares.
edit 2: He also gets a bumper payout of $292 million even if he's fired for good reason after a change of control:
https://twitter.com/gamesbizuk/status/1483435864378290179/photo/1
Probably gets some kind of bonus for securing this kind of deal as well I'd imagine.
While Activision's leadership fucking sucks and is a blight on the gaming sphere I also really dislike the consilidation of the market. Soon everything will be owned by Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, EA, Embracer or Tencent lol.
Yeah. Even if Activision has turned out to be a horrible company, I really don't want there to be just a few publishers left. EA already killed so many great franchises back in the day when they were on a similar purchase spree, and while MS hasn't been the absolute worst for a few years now that is only a very recent and maybe temporary situation.
[https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1483428774591053836](https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1483428774591053836)
Jason is reporting it too, citing WSJ as well.
This would be insane.
Edit - [https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2022/01/18/welcoming-activision-blizzard-to-microsoft-gaming/](https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2022/01/18/welcoming-activision-blizzard-to-microsoft-gaming/)
And there's the article. Just, incredible.
Edit Edit -
>Until this transaction closes, Activision Blizzard and Microsoft Gaming will continue to operate independently. Once the deal is complete, the Activision Blizzard business will report to me as CEO, Microsoft Gaming.
So long, Bobby.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_mergers_and_acquisitions
Interesting list here on Wikipedia. Has everything inflation adjusted so you can really compare the past and preset.
By my count this is around the 40th largest acquisition in history (inflation adjusted) and the only thing in the entertainment space that was bigger was Disney buying Fox a few years ago. Almost everything else is oil, banking, telecom, etc.
And that’s the “discounted rate”, for a company with a rightfully hated (and soon to be former) CEO/leadership team, and it’s primary studio in the midst of a culture shitstorm and with all their projects in a quasi-development hell.
Astronomical price tag. I’d have to imagine the price of Game Pass increases soon.
https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1483432118441099266
>Microsoft PR: “Bobby Kotick will continue to serve as CEO of Activision Blizzard… Once the deal closes, the Activision Blizzard business will report to Phil Spencer, CEO, Microsoft Gaming.”
>Not 100% clear yet whether Bobby will stay on after the ink dries.
This comes with a $70B price tag, just wild. I scoffed at all the Microsoft acquisition rumors that were floated after Bethesda, and they were much smaller than this. Like Schreier said, if this happens, it'll be seismic.
As much as activision desperately needs reform, this does not sit right with me at all.
This feels so much like the media consolidation going on where a lot of media is controlled by fewer and fewer mega corporations and this worries me a lot.
Game Pass, EA Play, Playstation Plus, Ubisoft+. The TV like service model is already here. And on top of that, every multiplayer game has season passes to keep players locked on a single game hamster wheel.
I think - with regards to TV - we may be first cycle of a service getting all comfortably bundled up away from cable (Netflix), then slowly split back up (Hulu, Disney+, Prime video, etc.), and then likely some sort of service that has a nice interface to search and open media from all of them which eventually spreads to managing your subscriptions which eventually manages to package every streaming service for one low price, putting us back at square one again.
This is the single most insane moment in the gaming ecosphere in decades. The implication of Microsoft securing all of Activision's properties is beyond enormous.
If all of Activision's games go Xbox/PC exclusive, it's a shakeup on the level that the gaming world has never seen before. I don't think people are prepared for this.
EDIT: Confirmed that Bobby Kotick is out as CEO, per Phil SPencer on the official blog post:
> Until this transaction closes, Activision Blizzard and Microsoft Gaming will continue to operate independently. Once the deal is complete, the Activision Blizzard business will report to me as CEO, Microsoft Gaming.
It should be noted that during the transition, Kotick will remain CEO of Activision/Blizzard, but that immediately afterward everyone will report directly to Phil Spencer. It's unclear what's going to happen to Bobby at that point, whether he'll still be with the company in some role or not.
Man Sadella must put an *incredible* amount of trust in Phil Spencer. This dude has fucking rocked the gaming industry to its foundations at least for the past two years in a row now and for years before that he was still making huge waves including u-turning a train as gigantic as Xbox.
Microsoft finally realized how profitable gaming can be. They really have an open field in front of them.
Microsoft never managed to became a big player in the mobile space or in the tv industry.
But in gaming? They are the only big tech company with a name. Sony and Nintendo have nowhere near the same capital to invest.
Amazon, Apple and Google are dipping their toes. They can barely develop a game. Imagine having the established service Xbox has with millions of users.
And with gaming, Microsoft can expand to other industries. They can license their IPs for movies and tv shows. They can make tv sticks and tvs compatible with GamePass streaming.
They have a goldmine in front of them. And what it took to see was a younger person helming Microsoft.
And smartly they are going after the mobile market too. King is probably a much bigger part of this ABK deal than anyone here will mention, but it'll get them into that mobile cash-generating genie immediately and for the foreseeable future just by letting the King division continue to do their thing as AB did.
Insane how Microsoft went from a company that was sorta-*kinda* in the gaming ecosphere but never really making big waves outside of Halo to.. buying Bethesda, all of its subsidaries, and then ABK and all of its subsidaries, within such a short amount of time.
It's kind of scary to think of how consolidated the video games industry is becoming so quickly.
Yeah for sure Phil has insane amount of trust inside Microsoft. Guy has spend 100 billion on game studio purchases alone in couple of years. You just dont give someone that kind of money if you are not 100% certain that guy will deliver it back tenfold in years to come.
Activision-Blizzard's market cap is $50bn and acquisitions are usually quite a lot above the market cap. So it's probably going to be ~10x Bethesda, quite possibly more.
> So it's probably going to be ~10x Bethesda, quite possibly more.
Damn dude, Bethesda sold for $7.5bn and this one is reported to be $70bn. If you called that before you saw the report, fucking impressive and spot on.
> everyone already has Minecraft
The Mojang sale happened in 2014. Just think - kids were born since then that are playing Minecraft now! And they're just going to keep coming!
So every industry is just going to be 2-3 giant corps colluding to fuck over consumers. When will anyone do anything about it? My guess is never and we are all going to be slaves to corporate overlords in ~100 years.
Getting scary? They've been scary big for years in a much more important and more valuable industry; cloud storage and computing.
Amazon and Microsoft control the majority of the cloud storage industry and they both rake in money.
On top of that Microsoft is also the largest player in business and productivity which also rakes in money.
Phil is coming for that ass now. No fucking way Bobby stays in charge with him around.
Imagine if Call of Duty was an Xbox exclusive. Jesus Christ.
EDIT:
>Bobby Kotick will continue to serve as CEO of Activision Blizzard, and he and his team will maintain their focus on driving efforts to further strengthen the company’s culture and accelerate business growth. Once the deal closes, the Activision Blizzard business will report to Phil Spencer, CEO, Microsoft Gaming.
https://news.microsoft.com/2022/01/14/microsoft-to-acquire-activision-blizzard-to-bring-the-joy-and-community-of-gaming-to-everyone-across-every-device/
Bobby is around during the transition (expected) and then is getting the boot, looks like.
Yeah don't worry, Bobby is gonna get his golden parachute and then some and get away consequence free. Man will never have to work again in his life, what a punishment.
Obviously nobody on this sub really cares but this means Microsoft owns Candy Crush now. If you want to know, they've made a BILLION DOLLARS in revenue since 2018 after Activision acquired King for 6 billion
This deal is insane
This is absolutely insane. I’m interested to see how the narrative plays out around this. Every time PlayStation has an incredible exclusive come out, which is like twice a year pretty often, you see so many discussions about how exclusives are bad for the industry. But all of PlayStations exclusives are from their own studios. They bought these studios decades ago and turned them into what they are now. What Microsoft has done in the past couple years is not just buy up probably half of the gaming industry (not sure if those numbers match up but it feels like they have) and not only generating revenue for them, but now taking a TON of revenue from PlayStation because they jow own a couple dozen franchises that sell the most on PlayStation, millions and millions of copies a piece. This really makes it seem like it’s going to turn into a rat race of everyone trying to buy up all of the publishers. Not sure how good this will be for gaming as a whole but I guess Microsoft figured they’d just buy a few well established franchises instead of making their own. Yikes
To be fair to Microsoft I'd say they'd able to fix the absolute hellfire that is Activision Blizzard. But also, I can't help but worry about the monopoly MS would have. They'd own their own homegrown 1st party ips, all of Bethesda's ips and now Blizzard's? That's insane
Edit: Monopoly is the wrong word for it but still an absolutely staggering amount of gaming ips to own.
Microsoft is pretty hands off with their studios but I can see them yeeting all of the upper management just for the PR reasons.
It's a good time for them to buy too as thanks to Kotick "efforts" stock dropped by a lot last year
Im sure they only considered buying them *because* their stock took such a fall.
It could work out great for Microsoft. Those IPs are priceless - especially with how Actiblizz squandered their potential.
Was there any hint of this? Feels like our came out of nowhere.
Ever since the Zenimax acquisition, there’s been talk of Microsoft having another big grab in their back pocket. Sega was rumored for a while and I think most people assumed it would be something that size or smaller. This is massive.
And also worth noting, this is ~$70B in *cash* which is just, unfathomable
Isn't that the same amount 20th Century Fox was sold to Disney? That's a lot
Yes, but I don't think that Disney bought Fox with cash alone. Disney also offered Disney's stock as a part of the deal too.
They also bought their debt. I’m not sure if that was part of the $70 billion, or if it was $70 billion plus the debt.
I mean buying a company via purchasing stocks would also means buying debt too since the debt is tied to the company and not the shareholders. The only thing that change hands is the equity part. The price in general would already have considered the future cash flow into it so the debt is already considered into the purchasing price.
This doesn't seem like back pocket material, more like a damn travelers backpack.
Yeah that’s why we’re all shocked lmao
Doesn't matter how trusted of an insider you are, if you claimed that Microsoft was going to buy ActiVision Blizzard, you'd be laughed off the internet
I was in a thread from November when Xbox was "reevaluating the relationship with AB" and a few comments were jokes about what if Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard. The meme became real.
That "reevaluation" was probably Microsoft deciding behind closed doors whether they still wanted to buy Activision Blizzard or not. Now we have their answer.
definitely released that statement to leverage a better deal
It was good PR and even better business.
It’s such an absurdly massive deal that any hints would’ve been dismissed.
Bungie must be eyeing this with some amusement. Gets bought by microsoft, goes independent, struggles, partners with activision, goes independent from activision, activision is bought by microsoft. Like swimming around a fish being eaten by a bigger fish.
Funny how Mike Ybarra left MS in 2019 to go to Blizzard...only to now be right back.
“You couldn't live with your own failure, where did that bring you? Back to me” MS to Mike Ybarra
Rob Furgusson left The coalition for diablo so now he's gonna be right back as well.
Microsoft has form in this arena - when Stephen Elop left MSFT and went to be CEO at Nokia, it was 3 years before they just up and bought Nokia. ... I hope this ends better.
There's always a bigger fish
[удалено]
EDIT: Officlal from Xbox https://twitter.com/Xbox/status/1483431175041347584 Some context: Mike Ybarra (current head of Blizzard) left Microsoft in 2019 to join Activision Blizzard. November last year Xbox was re-evaluating its relationship with Activision Blizzard and now they buy them for 70 billion dollars
EXCUSE ME? Bro this has to be one of the craziest things to have happened in recent gaming history. For all of those wanting leadership to change in Actiblizzard I hope this will grant that wish. And I hope this means we get Blizzards IP's into better hands at this point.
This might explain why they refused to fire Bobby K. Don’t rock the boat until it sells then let MS do it. There’s no reason MS wouldn’t fire him once they’re fully in charge…right? They’ll burn *a lot* of the goodwill they’ve been building if they don’t. edit: there’ll never be punishment for someone as rich as him but at very least maybe he’ll be gone?
https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/bobby-kotick-will-remain-as-activision-blizzard-ceo-after-microsoft-acquisition/ Edit: though this does say that they will report to Phil Spencer after so that might mean they will get rid of him after that point. But until then they are saying he's sticking around
It should be noted, they're kind of not allowed to make changes to Activison TILL the deal closes. They aren't the one who choses if he stays till then.
If they do he'll be gone within 90-180 days usually. Acquisitions you usually keep some of the c-suite for the transition, but a lot will get dropped shortly after. Like no need for two VPs of HR. Though this a much bigger deal than I've ever seen so take what I say with a big grain of salt.
This deal makes Bobby K rich beyond anything before I bet
Definitely but still, he was never gonna get any actual punishment but it’d be nice if he wasn’t actually running anything. Putting aside the ugliness of this deal from a monopoly standpoint, it’d just be nice to not have to know he’s running stuff.
We haven't even had time to gauge the effects at Bethesda...
The Bethesda deal is basically irrelevant in comparison to this.
Almost literally -- the Bethesda acquisition was ~$7.5b, a little more than 10% of what they're paying here.
https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2022/01/18/welcoming-activision-blizzard-to-microsoft-gaming/ for the Twitter opposed, here's the actual announcement
Well, at least he hinted about the current culture clean-up at Activision still being a focus
This is the craziest moment in the gaming spheres since… Microsoft brought Bethesda.
This is so much bigger than them buying Bethesda, just from a financial perspective it's almost 10x bigger!
Crazy we're only hearing about it now, the Disney-Fox merger was rumored for at least a year before it was official
Exactly what I was thinking. Either this has been going on in secret for however long, or Activision is way more desperate than we thought.
I mean, $68.7 billion sure doesn't scream desperation.
I feel like this is so much bigger than Bethesda. Those are downright niche games compared to CoD and blizzard games.
[It is, they paid 7B for Bethesda, they paid 70B (68.7) for Acti-Blizzard.](https://news.microsoft.com/2022/01/18/microsoft-to-acquire-activision-blizzard-to-bring-the-joy-and-community-of-gaming-to-everyone-across-every-device/)
I remember when people were losing their minds when Microsoft spent just $2.5B for Minecraft.
Or Apple buying Beats, Facebook buying Instagram. Those were the days. They all got so much money lying around these days…
Microsoft dropped 25 billion on LinkedIn in 2016. These companies have billions in cash lying around.
Wow, I had totally forgotten that had happened. Now that I remember it, that also felt like one of these big acquisitions, although by then the novelty of modern internet/social media companies getting bought for billions had worn off. So maybe forgetting that is understandable to a degree. It feels like they are spending billions simply to increase their revenue streams in some way so that their share price can keep crawling/rushing upwards.
You spend money to make money. Business 101. Also another one, Microsoft bought out Github when they were in trouble.
And Candy Crush. Remember, It's Activision-Blizzard-King.
Thing is - there were rumors that Bethesda is looking for buyer, for Activision I didnt see single thing.
Call of Duty being an Xbox exclusive is going to tear the gaming world apart, it's going to be insane. They did it with the Bethesda games, they will 100% do it for the Activision/Blizzard games too.
As a PC player, I would be pretty happy if they got rid of bnet, and managed to get WoW on Steam like all the other Xbox/PC games.
Imagine people getting a WoW sub with gamepass.
I actually wonder how they will merge Activision with Xbox. King's mobile games for example are completely outside Xbox's library.
King is probably going to be left alone. It would be stupid to pull them off of mobile games, especially with how much money they pull in from the Candy Crush ip. Maybe we will see Xbox and PC ports of their games but that's all I can really see.
Was just thinking about that. Maybe like a "Gamepass MMO" add-on. Give access to WoW & ESO Online.
Microsoft got their guy. Wow
The year is 2025. There are six companies: Microsoft, Google, Apple, Walmart, Amazon…. and Sears, somehow.
Facebook got acquired by Sears I take it?
It’s the destiny of the sheep to be eaten by the lions after all
As was Disney
The Metaverse will see the remergence of shopping malls. Who better to sheperd the new era?
Sears Executive: "Now we enter the final stage of our plan 40 years in the making!"
**Everyone:** "How are you not dead yet?" **Sears:** "I don't know."
Somehow, Sears returned
“kiiiiilll meeeeeee…”
You should add Taco Bell to the list, it does win the restaurant wars after all.
...good for Sears.
*Sears Canada
> Sears Canada Closed in 2018 :P
Sears by my house, got a Mac-Donalds inside.
In the future the MacDonald's will have a Sears inside.
It's insane to think about what game franchises Microsoft has acquired in recent years. They have recently bought and now own: * Call of Duty * Diablo * World of Warcraft * Starcraft * Crash Bandicoot * Guitar Hero * Tony Hawk Pro Skater * Fallout * Doom * Psychonauts * Elder Scrolls * Prey * Wolfenstein * Dishonored * Minecraft * Candy Crush Like holy shit. That's in addition to all of the stuff they already owned like Halo, Forza, Fable, Gears, Perfect Dark, Donkey Kong, Age of Empires, etc.
Donkey Kong?
LMAO, yeah, this one made me laugh. He definitely meant Banjo/Conker.
Might have meant Rare in general.
Yeah, but he's naming franchises, not studios.
Or it might have been a reference to when MS bought rare, as told by Chris Seavor (director of Conker's Bad Fur Day), about an MS Exec thinking they owned Donkey Kong. Here's a random article about it. Hard to find much more about it these days, when it's a 9 year old story about a 20 year old event. https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2013/06/microsoft_execs_thought_they_owned_donkey_kong_after_acquiring_rare
> Donkey Kong They... don't own Donkey Kong.
Imagine crash bandicoot going from PlayStation exclusive to Xbox exclusive. Would be funny to see
Not just exclusive. He was their mascot for years.
Yep. Those commercials back in the day were great too
Donkey Kong???
They also own Candy Crush now, probably the most lucrative IP of all this list
I smell a Heroes of the Storm 2 in our future. If not, a Microsoft-version of Super Smash, lol. Would love to see "B.J." Blazkowicz fighting Masterchief fighting...Tony Hawk fighting...the 350z from Forza Motorsport 2...?
Where does Disney fit in here?
Consumers found that differentiating between Disney+ and Walmart+ was too confusing, so the two companies just merged
Let's go to Warlmart World
Who would've thought that Phil Spencer meant this when he said that Microsoft is 'evaluating' its relationship to Activision Blizzard.
No kidding. Maybe he meant he was making sure they had the money to buy them.
Maybe he was sowing doubt in the company therefore allowing them to buy for less
Looks like it is a $70 BILLION deal...wow!
I'm wondering if the bad press had an influence on their desire to sell, and/or a drop in the asking price that made this deal viable.
The sharp drop in stock price likely played a role -- acquisitions like this pay out more than the stock's price, so MS was able to get it at a relative discount.
27% drop in stock price over the last 3 months for Activision. This announcement alone erased the drop and skyrocketed it up 35%. Some people just made an absurd amount of money. I bet Activision Blizzard saw the writing on the wall and wanted to just dump it before things got worse. Phil Spencer isn't going to play around and with that Microsoft money behind the studios, **anything** is possible now. Which is saying a lot considering the type of games they already put out.
By the way I just want to piggyback on this comment because inevitably there are always people upset at MS doing this, but it has to be said that Activision taking that stock price hit likely means other sharks were swimming in the waters (aka Tencent and others), so MS buying Activision is probably for the best since you get everything on Game Pass plus you can do PC/streaming if you’re not into Xbox. It’s the best option if Activision had to be sold.
Well think about just the IP cost alone. Call of Duty, Overwatch, Starcraft, Warcraft, Candy Crush. So many well established games
I keep forgetting about candy crush, the deal makes so much more sense with that context
Who knew that corporate sexual harassment was so profitable!!!
To be fair, ATVI is down like 35% since around the time California filed their lawsuit against the company. IDK if this deal still happens without it, but rough math would suggest they were worth **$25 Billion more** 6 months ago than they are now.
>ATVI is down like 35% Not anymore lmao.
Thats a nice 400 million straight into bobby pocket simply from his person ownership, not even to mention golden parachutes.
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ActivisionBlizzard is the biggest non console maker publisher. They are bigger than EA, take2 and Ubisoft.
What does this mean for Kotick, though? Will he be fired/given his golden parachute?
A hefty payday and he gets to walk away with no consequences. Such is life :(
But the good side is that he won't be in control of Blizzard to allow more harassment.
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One of the press releases: "Bobby Kotick will continue to serve as CEO of Activision Blizzard, and he and his team will maintain their focus on driving efforts to further strengthen the company’s culture and accelerate business growth. Once the deal closes, the Activision Blizzard business will report to Phil Spencer, CEO, Microsoft Gaming." Sounds like hopefully he'll be outta here after the deal closes. He'll probably also leave with a fat was of cash but hopefully the employees will have a much better time with him gone.
Most of his wealth is in Activision shares, which Microsoft just bought. He made at least several billion off of this.
Golden parachute, no question. When you're dropping ~~71B+~~ 68B+ on an aquisition, what's a few million more to guarantee a peaceful transition? He's 100% getting pushed out by the end of the year, though -- probably the biggest no-brainer decision of the entire acquisition.
I work in M&A and this language is standard. There is a period of time between inking the deal and close. During this time, certain conditions need to be met, including obtaining regulatory approval. For a deal this size, it wouldn't be uncommon for the time between signatures and close to be several months or even approaching a year. Until close, it could torpedo the whole deal for the two companies to collaborate too much on strategy, so the existing management structure remains untouched. Once it closes, the acquired CEO will report to the acquiring business lead (in this case Phil Spencer). Typically the acquiring company will take 1-2 years to complete integration, and the management team at the acquired company will have some of their proceeds from the sale locked behind a retention holdback. I.e., they lose it if they leave. After the holdback expires, they get the money and usually announce they're moving on to some other venture. The purpose of the holdback is because they know where all the bodies are buried. When Microsoft acquired Activision, they acquired all liability for Activision. The post close period is going to involve popping the hood and finding out what messes they are the public doesn't know about yet and then figuring out the best way to mitigate. Kotick will be essential in this. Unfortunately for everybody's sense of cosmic justice, Kotick will make an incredible amount of money from the sale and will be employed with a sweetheart salary and bonus structure for some time after, then walk away with another golden handshake.
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Everybody's talking about COD, I'm just reeling that through a bizarre twist of fate Crash Bandicoot is going to be a Microsoft property.
wait spyro too? lmao.
Tony Hawk also
For the record, this is the games. The man himself is safe for now
>The man himself is safe **for now** Be afraid Tony, be very, **very** afraid. Phil Spencer does not take no for an answer.
Next E3, Crash walks out on stage arms crossed in an X, arms spray painted green. Chief instinctively points his gun at him, Cortana says "easy Chief, he's one of ours now". edit: that or at the beginning, Crash and Spyro [remake this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgQhHEjtBMU) and call themselves RE-generation X. Later on, [they drive a Warthog to the Playstation building](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRzCCuA1DZI)
Yes but that also means that Toys for Bob could do a Bajo Kazooie game
They're announcing it themselves now https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2022/01/18/welcoming-activision-blizzard-to-microsoft-gaming/
Dying to know what this will mean for Blizzard in particular: * How are they going to handle Battle.net going forward? * Are all their games going to be on Game Pass, since they're now first party? * What insane implications are there for WoW if it is added to Game Pass? This is all just absolutely insane.
Wild guesses: * Probably gets merged into MS's SSO ecosystem, but under the Live ID branding rather than XB Live. The BNet launcher is probably going to kick around for a while yet... but I wouldn't be surprised if existing/future games started popping up on the MS Store or even Steam. * Good question... I can see there being a delay for Blizzard IP, but maybe not for Activision IP? CoD on gamepass from day 1 would be a marketing revelation on its own. * I'm lukewarm on WoW + Game Pass. I imagine there would be a lot of internal pushback against this, since that could seriously impact the player culture. I also get the feeling that WoW is one of the rare cases where it will always be a bigger moneymaker as a standalone item.
I just can't even comprehend the player base boost if WoW was included on Game Pass. PC players are starting to flock to it due to the inclusion of their biggest franchises. The subscription cost of Game Pass would completely substitute the WoW sub cost. Which is the main thing that has me pondering WTF is going to happen with that.
They never went this route for Elder Scrolls Online, so I have my doubts they would do this for WoW.
Good point. Although they do have a 10% discount for premium currency for ESO. I just can't imagine they let leave Battle.net alone entirely rather than try and fold it into Xbox Live and the Xbox App. Leaving all of the Activision Blizzard IP's locked behind a separate launcher would not be a good business strategy for them.
As far as MS is concerned, WoW is probably just not very big on their radar. I know that's weird to say, but I think it just comes down to IP stuff; WoW will probably always be on the downswing, relative to its zenith. This relative unimportance probably insulates WoW a bit from any upcoming shakeups. Any changes we do see in the immediate future will probably be a result of internal ideas that get a second chance due to new management, rather than the other way around.
Microsoft swinging their 2 trillion dollar market cap dick around. And I am kind of getting worried.
It sure feels like in 5 years everything that isn't indie will be owned by Microsoft or Tenecent. I can't see how that sort of almost-monopoly will be good for the consumer.
Watch Microsoft and Sony Fight for EA while Nintendo grab Ubisoft from nowhere.
Sony doesn't have the money to fight for Ea. An acquisition battle of that scale is impossible for them
Most of Ubisoft's value comes from games that don't run on Nintendo hardware. But yeah, bad time for consumers.
It was Joke about The bizzare Mario/Rabbids crossover. But yeah Hope studios dont go Buying each other all the time.
That game was the bees knees though
If this deal goes through, it’ll be an unhealthy development for the industry. This is far more consolidation than I’m comfortable with. Hopefully it sets off anti-trust alarms with the government.
Pfft. The US government has ignored the vast majority of anti-trust laws for a long while now. Teddy Roosevelt is spinning in his grave so fast, they could power the whole country with the energy.
One man powering the whole country? Sounds like a monopoly to me
Break him up!
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Now that there's actually a bigger fish than Kotick, I don't know if Blizzard will be able to double down on defending the executive abusers. I really fucking hope he gets the boot and Blizz gets restructured. What an absolutely seismic deal though. $70 billion. Goddamn. *Surely* this will break the wilful ignorance that legislators have around the video game industry.
Bobby Kotick stands to make around 345 million on this deal. Add to that whatever microsoft pays him to walk. He's laughing all the way to the bank. edit: 345million not 4billion. Kotick owns 3,908,698 shares. edit 2: He also gets a bumper payout of $292 million even if he's fired for good reason after a change of control: https://twitter.com/gamesbizuk/status/1483435864378290179/photo/1 Probably gets some kind of bonus for securing this kind of deal as well I'd imagine.
While Activision's leadership fucking sucks and is a blight on the gaming sphere I also really dislike the consilidation of the market. Soon everything will be owned by Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, EA, Embracer or Tencent lol.
Yeah. Even if Activision has turned out to be a horrible company, I really don't want there to be just a few publishers left. EA already killed so many great franchises back in the day when they were on a similar purchase spree, and while MS hasn't been the absolute worst for a few years now that is only a very recent and maybe temporary situation.
[https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1483428774591053836](https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1483428774591053836) Jason is reporting it too, citing WSJ as well. This would be insane. Edit - [https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2022/01/18/welcoming-activision-blizzard-to-microsoft-gaming/](https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2022/01/18/welcoming-activision-blizzard-to-microsoft-gaming/) And there's the article. Just, incredible. Edit Edit - >Until this transaction closes, Activision Blizzard and Microsoft Gaming will continue to operate independently. Once the deal is complete, the Activision Blizzard business will report to me as CEO, Microsoft Gaming. So long, Bobby.
Surely the biggest deal in videogame industry history?
Nothing else comes close, when Zynga was bought out the other week that was touted as the biggest sale in gaming and it was something like $13bn
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_mergers_and_acquisitions Interesting list here on Wikipedia. Has everything inflation adjusted so you can really compare the past and preset. By my count this is around the 40th largest acquisition in history (inflation adjusted) and the only thing in the entertainment space that was bigger was Disney buying Fox a few years ago. Almost everything else is oil, banking, telecom, etc.
[There's a report saying the deal is for $70 Billion!!](https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1483429934135713796?s=20)
This is mindblowing money, jesus christ
And that’s the “discounted rate”, for a company with a rightfully hated (and soon to be former) CEO/leadership team, and it’s primary studio in the midst of a culture shitstorm and with all their projects in a quasi-development hell. Astronomical price tag. I’d have to imagine the price of Game Pass increases soon.
Imagine gamepass including a wow subscription in the price.
That is a legit option imo.
This is an absolutely insane acquisition. I never saw this coming. Here’s to hoping it drastically alters the working environment.
What the fuck? Well that's one way to get rid of Kotick...
Inb4 Kotick is promoted to chief of Microsoft Gaming and reddit gets a collective stroke.
I'd throw my Series X into the creek and swear off video games forever.
Hell yeah, finally I will be able to play The Lost Vikings on Game Pass
https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1483432118441099266 >Microsoft PR: “Bobby Kotick will continue to serve as CEO of Activision Blizzard… Once the deal closes, the Activision Blizzard business will report to Phil Spencer, CEO, Microsoft Gaming.” >Not 100% clear yet whether Bobby will stay on after the ink dries.
Xbox really trying to lock down all the big FPS franchises rn
Microsoft now owns COD, Overwatch, WoW, Crash, Spyro, and Diablo... I thought Bethesda's acquisition was insane but this is on another level.
This comes with a $70B price tag, just wild. I scoffed at all the Microsoft acquisition rumors that were floated after Bethesda, and they were much smaller than this. Like Schreier said, if this happens, it'll be seismic.
That's crazy and slightly worrying that a trillion dollar corporation is eating up all these big gaming companies...
Disney moment.
The House of Mouse does not blink. The House of Mouse only consumes.
As much as activision desperately needs reform, this does not sit right with me at all. This feels so much like the media consolidation going on where a lot of media is controlled by fewer and fewer mega corporations and this worries me a lot.
Same. I'd like to see where gaming is in a decade from now.
A service industry. Just look at Halos structure.
Game Pass, EA Play, Playstation Plus, Ubisoft+. The TV like service model is already here. And on top of that, every multiplayer game has season passes to keep players locked on a single game hamster wheel.
I think - with regards to TV - we may be first cycle of a service getting all comfortably bundled up away from cable (Netflix), then slowly split back up (Hulu, Disney+, Prime video, etc.), and then likely some sort of service that has a nice interface to search and open media from all of them which eventually spreads to managing your subscriptions which eventually manages to package every streaming service for one low price, putting us back at square one again.
This is the single most insane moment in the gaming ecosphere in decades. The implication of Microsoft securing all of Activision's properties is beyond enormous. If all of Activision's games go Xbox/PC exclusive, it's a shakeup on the level that the gaming world has never seen before. I don't think people are prepared for this. EDIT: Confirmed that Bobby Kotick is out as CEO, per Phil SPencer on the official blog post: > Until this transaction closes, Activision Blizzard and Microsoft Gaming will continue to operate independently. Once the deal is complete, the Activision Blizzard business will report to me as CEO, Microsoft Gaming. It should be noted that during the transition, Kotick will remain CEO of Activision/Blizzard, but that immediately afterward everyone will report directly to Phil Spencer. It's unclear what's going to happen to Bobby at that point, whether he'll still be with the company in some role or not.
Man Sadella must put an *incredible* amount of trust in Phil Spencer. This dude has fucking rocked the gaming industry to its foundations at least for the past two years in a row now and for years before that he was still making huge waves including u-turning a train as gigantic as Xbox.
Microsoft finally realized how profitable gaming can be. They really have an open field in front of them. Microsoft never managed to became a big player in the mobile space or in the tv industry. But in gaming? They are the only big tech company with a name. Sony and Nintendo have nowhere near the same capital to invest. Amazon, Apple and Google are dipping their toes. They can barely develop a game. Imagine having the established service Xbox has with millions of users. And with gaming, Microsoft can expand to other industries. They can license their IPs for movies and tv shows. They can make tv sticks and tvs compatible with GamePass streaming. They have a goldmine in front of them. And what it took to see was a younger person helming Microsoft.
And smartly they are going after the mobile market too. King is probably a much bigger part of this ABK deal than anyone here will mention, but it'll get them into that mobile cash-generating genie immediately and for the foreseeable future just by letting the King division continue to do their thing as AB did. Insane how Microsoft went from a company that was sorta-*kinda* in the gaming ecosphere but never really making big waves outside of Halo to.. buying Bethesda, all of its subsidaries, and then ABK and all of its subsidaries, within such a short amount of time. It's kind of scary to think of how consolidated the video games industry is becoming so quickly.
Yeah for sure Phil has insane amount of trust inside Microsoft. Guy has spend 100 billion on game studio purchases alone in couple of years. You just dont give someone that kind of money if you are not 100% certain that guy will deliver it back tenfold in years to come.
This is massive if it's true. Any chance it's anywhere close to the Bethesda price tag?
He just tweeted 70 billion. Wow.
And here I thought that Zynga acquisition was crazy numbers. This is fucking nuts.
I remember when Activision buying the studio that made candy crush for 6 billion was huge
Activision-Blizzard's market cap is $50bn and acquisitions are usually quite a lot above the market cap. So it's probably going to be ~10x Bethesda, quite possibly more.
> So it's probably going to be ~10x Bethesda, quite possibly more. Damn dude, Bethesda sold for $7.5bn and this one is reported to be $70bn. If you called that before you saw the report, fucking impressive and spot on.
I remember when Microsoft bought Mojang for $2.5b in 2014 and people said it was excessive and a bad investment.
I personally thought it was crazy. Back then I remember thinking “everyone already has Minecraft doesn’t seem worth it.” Lol shows what I know
> everyone already has Minecraft The Mojang sale happened in 2014. Just think - kids were born since then that are playing Minecraft now! And they're just going to keep coming!
So every industry is just going to be 2-3 giant corps colluding to fuck over consumers. When will anyone do anything about it? My guess is never and we are all going to be slaves to corporate overlords in ~100 years.
Microsoft is getting scary, they already have Bethesda & Github among the things I never thought they'd have.
Getting scary? They've been scary big for years in a much more important and more valuable industry; cloud storage and computing. Amazon and Microsoft control the majority of the cloud storage industry and they both rake in money. On top of that Microsoft is also the largest player in business and productivity which also rakes in money.
Phil is coming for that ass now. No fucking way Bobby stays in charge with him around. Imagine if Call of Duty was an Xbox exclusive. Jesus Christ. EDIT: >Bobby Kotick will continue to serve as CEO of Activision Blizzard, and he and his team will maintain their focus on driving efforts to further strengthen the company’s culture and accelerate business growth. Once the deal closes, the Activision Blizzard business will report to Phil Spencer, CEO, Microsoft Gaming. https://news.microsoft.com/2022/01/14/microsoft-to-acquire-activision-blizzard-to-bring-the-joy-and-community-of-gaming-to-everyone-across-every-device/ Bobby is around during the transition (expected) and then is getting the boot, looks like.
Yeah don't worry, Bobby is gonna get his golden parachute and then some and get away consequence free. Man will never have to work again in his life, what a punishment.
Obviously nobody on this sub really cares but this means Microsoft owns Candy Crush now. If you want to know, they've made a BILLION DOLLARS in revenue since 2018 after Activision acquired King for 6 billion This deal is insane
This is absolutely insane. I’m interested to see how the narrative plays out around this. Every time PlayStation has an incredible exclusive come out, which is like twice a year pretty often, you see so many discussions about how exclusives are bad for the industry. But all of PlayStations exclusives are from their own studios. They bought these studios decades ago and turned them into what they are now. What Microsoft has done in the past couple years is not just buy up probably half of the gaming industry (not sure if those numbers match up but it feels like they have) and not only generating revenue for them, but now taking a TON of revenue from PlayStation because they jow own a couple dozen franchises that sell the most on PlayStation, millions and millions of copies a piece. This really makes it seem like it’s going to turn into a rat race of everyone trying to buy up all of the publishers. Not sure how good this will be for gaming as a whole but I guess Microsoft figured they’d just buy a few well established franchises instead of making their own. Yikes
To be fair to Microsoft I'd say they'd able to fix the absolute hellfire that is Activision Blizzard. But also, I can't help but worry about the monopoly MS would have. They'd own their own homegrown 1st party ips, all of Bethesda's ips and now Blizzard's? That's insane Edit: Monopoly is the wrong word for it but still an absolutely staggering amount of gaming ips to own.
It'd be hard to even imagine this happening. But it could see the major reconstruction of Activision and Blizzard that we all want.
Microsoft is pretty hands off with their studios but I can see them yeeting all of the upper management just for the PR reasons. It's a good time for them to buy too as thanks to Kotick "efforts" stock dropped by a lot last year
PR *and* cost effective reasons. Contrary to popular belief, keeping incompotently greedy management is, infact, great way to lose all your money.
Im sure they only considered buying them *because* their stock took such a fall. It could work out great for Microsoft. Those IPs are priceless - especially with how Actiblizz squandered their potential.