Well, it’s official. Microsoft bought Actiblizz.
Today is a good day to play. We have completed the acquisition of Activision Blizzard and are welcoming Activision Blizzard and its businesses to Microsoft Gaming.
Activision, Blizzard, and King publish some of the most played and most beloved franchises in gaming history, from Pitfall to Call of Duty, Warcraft to Overwatch, Candy Crush Saga to Farm Heroes Super Saga. By combining Xbox with Activision Blizzard’s skill, knowledge, and amazing legacy of games, we will bring the joy and community of gaming to even more players around the world.
We are eager to learn from their creativity, exchange insights and best practices, and empower our new colleagues to bring their visions to the widest possible audience. And today, we officially start the work of bringing more groundbreaking games to more players than ever before and across new platforms from mobile to cloud streaming. We also begin the work to make Activision, Blizzard, and King’s muchloved library of games available in Game Pass and other platforms — we’ll have more to share in the coming months.
We couldn’t be more excited that Activision Blizzard employees are our colleagues, co-workers, and teammates. Bobby Kotick has agreed to remain in his role through the end of 2023, reporting directly to me, to ensure a smooth and seamless integration. We look forward to working together as a unified team and we will share more updates on our new organizational structure in the coming months.
I‘d like to give a very special and heartfelt thanks to everyone who helped make this acquisition possible. We couldn’t have accomplished this without your dedication.
Over the coming weeks, I’ll be visiting the Activision, Blizzard, and King offices, along with members of our Gaming Leadership Team. We’ll have the opportunity to welcome our new colleagues at our next virtual all-hands for Xbox employees, and for the greater Microsoft community, we’ll discuss this and more in the November 8 session of the Company Strategy Series.
Together, we can unlock a world of possibilities for players and creators.
Phil
Just wait for the massive layoffs that’s already happening in the gaming industries 😔
As long as it starts with Kotick and the other soulless ghouls at the top of Acti-Blizzard, I’m not sure anyone will complain.
Kotick is retiring because he can’t take direction. But will receive hundreds of millions to do so. Why would MS fire anyone else when Activision and King makes money?
Redundant departments / systems already provided by Microsoft will be downsized.
Because that’s how they make more money.
Sony will buy EA or some shit and the corpo wars will begin.
LoL one step closer to our unavoidable cyberpunk dystopia
At what point do we declare that the cyberpunk dystopia is here, because like…
When the apes Elon experiments on survive the implants, instead of going insane and trying to tear them out.
Until then we’re just in a regular dystopia.
The cyberpunk dystopia is NOW, old man.
Let them eat each other. I’ll be over here playing indie games with actual depth, real care, still getting updates for free years down the line.
Just hope they start to move of Unity.
Sony doesn’t have the kind of money to buy a company comparable to ABK.
sure hope they don’t buy some other company you like then, in this unending purchase spree that we have that benefits literally no one but investors
Do people still like the shambling husk that is Blizzard at this point? I’ve been playing their games since Rock N’ Roll Racing and they’re not even close to the same company anymore.
Yes, their games are incredibly popular and sell millions upon millions. Hence why it cost Microsoft 68 billion dollars.
Ubisoft seems like it’s gonna be cheap enough to buy soon.
deleted by creator
Poor sysadmins trying to make sense of the new environments and joining them together.
If it helps you avoid users it’s a plus.
I’d take deciphering the Rosetta code over that any day.
This is absurd… they made a trailer for their corporate merger: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYU4q594LJ0
“Look at all the games you love! Please forget we’re a massive corporation which just moved 70 billion dollars closer to a monopoly and would certainly never abuse that position uwu”
That was awesome. I imagine if I worked for Activision Blizzard, that knowledge of Bobby Kotick leaving plus that welcome video would give me some feels.
At least Bobby Kotick is going
I guess. It’s not like he’s being thrown out on his ass though. Which is more than the actual workers can say. You know this merger will require “consolidation and remove redundancies” or whatever bullshit term they like using.
Unity and Sony are looking for a new CEO…
The mating of the dinosaurs. This is the same shit that happened to record labels the minute people were able to record quality sounds in their own homes. What happens when all the gaming industry is rolled under some parent organization?
I’ve seen lots of comments about Microsoft engaging in an acquisition war with Sony but isn’t it really against TenCent?
Why not both. Take away content from Tencent and fight with Sony for gamer attention at the same time.
I’m ready for the Doom + Diablo mashup game.
for each takedown you need to pay 0.1$
Doomablo is going to be TIGHT!
Diabloom. Demonic flowers attack!
666, mark of the gardener.
Plants vs Zombies 3: RIP AND TEAR EDITION