As per the title really. as far as I’m aware blizzard just make game how can that benefit Microsoft when it comes to cloud gaming/technology surely Microsoft has all that tech themselves?
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I’d imagine from Microsoft’s perspective it’s mainly about (1)owning some of the existing titles where their revenue comes from: call of duty, warcraft, overwatch, candy crush…(2) And it’s likely about the talent & the system they have for actually creating/maintaining the games itself so they can have more games in the future and draw people into the marketplace of the xbox (and I’d guess some of this tech/talent likely plays a role in other projects outside of gaming….the underlying gaming tech & skills are bleeding into more things); Microsoft isn’t leading in gaming compared to Sony. Gaming is a large market, which is attracting Microsoft since they are already so big they have to compete in large markets to make anything worthwhile. With this being said, Activision is a fairly small market cap compared to Microsoft & won’t make some transformative acquisition for the entirety of the company but likely helps to better compete in a large market.
Someone commented on exclusivity and that is very unlikely to be the case as I believe Microsoft followed through with signed contracts with other publishers, giving them the rights to also distribute Activision games for a number of years (regulators in various countries tried blocking the deal, there is a lot of anti-big tech company gov’t officials out there so this was viewed as a way to say that there should be no reason to block it since everyone else can distribute these games)…. A bit in relation to this is Sony really tried a big PR campaign against Microsoft & rile up regulators….they are probably very worried that Microsoft being a giant company is showing willingness to compete more in this space…scary for Sony.
And it’s not like acquiring Activision has to be good; it can be a waste & turn out to be bad….I personally question how great those games are and if they are getting old….have you seen battlebit recently? kind of competes with battlefied & COD, which are two giant titles in this space
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