Microsoft already owns Activision Blizzard, the American video game publisher responsible for such popular titles as Call of Duty, Candy Crush or Warcraft.
After twenty months of negotiations, which have served to convince competition organizations around the world of the benefits of the agreement, this morning the British regulator, the last one that opposed the purchase, has given the green light to the largest purchase in the history of entertainment: 68.7 billion dollars (about 65.104 million euros) to be the third largest video game company in the world behind the Chinese Tencent and the Japanese Sony.
Coinciding with the announcement of the completion of the purchase, Microsoft has published a video focused on the games that from today become part of the Xbox ecosystem.
“We love games. We play games, we create games, and we know firsthand how much games mean to all of us as individuals and collectively, as a community. And today we officially welcome Activision Blizzard and its teams to Xbox,” said the head of Microsoft's video game area, Phil Spencer, in a statement.
The sum that Microsoft has paid for Activision Blizzard is well above the $26 billion it cost to acquire LinkedIn. It is also much larger than the $7.5 billion it paid for video game publisher Bethesda and the $2.5 billion it cost to acquire the popular Minecraft.
After the purchase, Microsoft will not only have a select group of very popular franchises, but also the numerous development studios behind them, a workforce made up of the 8,500 professionals who until now were part of Activision Blizzard and that from today they join Microsoft.
Coinciding with the announcement of the purchase, Microsoft has published the following infographic in which you can see all the video game development studios it has after this announcement (you can enlarge the image by clicking above).
In the image you can see all the equipment and games that Microsoft currently has in development, and the role played by two studios based in Barcelona is notable. On the one hand, the veteran team at Digital Legends, which is currently in charge of the mobile version of Call of Duty; and on the other the important division that King, the Candy Crush company, has in Barcelona.
Since Microsoft announced its intention to buy Activision Blizzard in early 2022, the operation has been followed closely by specialized media and a large part of the video game enthusiast community.
During these twenty months Microsoft has had to make multiple concessions in order for the competition regulators of different countries to give the green light to the acquisition. These include keeping Call of Duty on PlayStation for a decade, bringing it to Nintendo Switch also for 10 years, or the sale to Ubisoft of the distribution rights for Activsion Blizzard's cloud games for a period of 15 years.
One of the first consequences that this purchase could have and that would directly affect consumers is the progressive arrival of new games to the Game Pass catalog, Microsoft's subscription gaming service. Although Activision Blizzard reported earlier this week that the new Call of Duty, which will go on sale this November, will not yet be part of this platform, it is expected that in the near future it will end up being included in this popular service.
