As we can all recall from January, Microsoft’s acquisition venture became the largest in history for the video game industry when announcing its plans to purchase Activision Blizzard for a rounded $70 billion. The deal was said to take more than a year with the finalizing deal to be completed sometime in fiscal year 2023. Recently, a story went out indicating the process could speed up with the FTC nearly concluding its investigation then.
Additionally, we learned in the past that part of the deal was to make a better industry according to Microsoft CEO Phil Spencer. He shared the ambition was to explore more opportunity to undo the bad work culture under the entertainment conglomerate – this possibly even bringing the career end for standing CEO Bobby Kotich. Not only that, but resurrect some of the comatose IPs in the vault currently at the publisher as well.
In a recent interview with Bloomberg, Spencer explains one large ambition that Microsoft is eager to get its hands on from this acquisition is the extensive reach in PC & mobile gaming established by Activision Blizzard.
The biggest gaming platform on the planet is mobile phones. One and a half billion people play on mobile phones. And I guess, regretfully as Microsoft, it’s not a place where we have a native platform. As gaming, coming from console and PC, we don’t have a lot of creative capability that has built hit mobile games.
He adds, “One thing about the videogame space is, if you’ve been around maybe too long, you know most of the creators out there. So you kind of know teams that could be a good fit in terms of what we were trying to do. But we really started the discussions, internally at least, on Activision Blizzard around the capability they had on mobile, and then PC with Blizzard. Those are the two things that were really driving our interest.”
The comments do not come at a surprise understanding the number of gross revenue that publisher King brings to Activision Blizzard’s annual results each cycle. Even Sony Interactive Entertainment has shared interest to delve deeper into this venture on smart phones. This week, the firm announced its acquisition for Savage Games. You can read the full report by heading here.
Are you surprised by Spencer’s excitement acquiring the publisher?
