Microsoft buys Activision Blizzard – What to expect?

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Microsoft’s recent purchases have been absolutely bombastic, taking the gaming industry by storm with their acquisitions of some insanely popular video game studios.


Why Did Microsoft Buy Activision Blizzard?

Well, the answer to this question is extremely simple.

Activision Blizzard is by far one of the world’s most highly sought-after publishing companies, which own quite a few studios under their belt. This purchase gives them access to all of these studios, and all of the subsequent video games that they developed.

They started this by purchasing a huge line-up of studios, such as The Coalition, Playground Games, Ninja Theory, Rare and more. However, they followed it up with an even more powerful decision of purchasing Zenimax in its entirety.

This gave Microsoft full access to every single game created by all subsidiaries belonging to Zenimax and its subsidiary Bethesda. Bethesda has quite literally one of the most popular line-ups of studios, which are making some of the most fantastic games to ever be created. The Microsoft Game Pass now has the entirety of that catalog, games such as Dishonored, Fallout, Elder Scrolls Skyrim, Rage, DOOM, DOOM Eternal, Prey, and more are now Microsoft’s owned properties.

So, to keep this streak going, Microsoft has now revealed its largest purchase to date. This is a purchase so huge, that it might give Microsoft a monopoly over the entirety of the gaming industry, in turn making them the world’s most important video game publisher. Activision Blizzard was acquired by Microsoft on January 18th of 2022. This is by far the biggest purchase in gaming history, at a magnanimous cost of 68.7 billion dollars. So, what does this mean for the future of gaming? Well… let’s talk more in-depth.


Big games at a minimal price

We’re living in an era where Call of Duty will eventually become a Microsoft Exclusive, along with games such as World of Warcraft, Diablo, Starcraft, Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, Overwatch, Prototype, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, Guitar Hero, Skylanders, Candy Crush, Marvel Ultimate Alliance, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, Call of Duty Mobile and many more!

These franchises have hundreds of millions of fans all around the world, waiting for more releases, and now that Microsoft has gone on and made a purchase as huge as this, there will be games coming out for sure.

This will also make Microsoft’s Game Pass one of the most important points of interest in the world of gaming in general. It is now the world’s largest gaming hub to ever exist, where you can play video games from all parts of the industry by paying only the minimum price. This is how Microsoft will also push for winning the console wars, by providing not just quality of games, but also a huge quantity of games at a very minimal price. Whereas Sony is still selling games at the 60 dollar price point.


What Does The Purchase Entail?

Well, the one thing that we already know is that Microsoft will be ensuring that almost every game from these studios will go on to become Microsoft exclusives.

This means that these games will only be released on Microsoft’s platforms, for example, the Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and Microsoft Windows. These will be the key platforms where you will play the games by their studios because these are the only platforms where Game Pass is available.

Game Pass will also be a huge feature for Microsoft’s consoles and operating systems. Now that Microsoft essentially owns the entirety of Activision Blizzard, Bethesda, Zenimax’s studios and are on good terms with the rest of the industry as a whole, they are a huge force in the gaming industry.

We’ve already seen signs of what Microsoft’s purchase of Bethesda and Activision will lead up to.

This will decrease the sales for other consoles, meaning that Sony won’t have access to Call of Duty games, which are some of the biggest sellers in gaming history. If that isn’t an option, they will have to release their games on other platforms as well to compensate for the losses. We’ve already seen that being implemented already, Sony has been releasing their games on PC for the past year and a half.

Horizon Zero Dawn, Days Gone, God of War, Detroit Become Human, Heavy Rain, Beyond Two Souls are all on PC while Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection is on its way sometime this year. This just means that Microsoft Windows users will reap the benefits from basically all sides of the spectrum, making PC the most important gaming platform.


What Can We Expect from Activision Blizzard in the Future?

The one thing that we can expect from Activision Blizzard is way more games.

Now that they have Microsoft’s resources, the opportunities are limitless. The one thing that we can expect is that there will be way more games that were quite ignored for a while, so we can hope to see more Crash Bandicoot games, more Spyro games, games set within the Prototype world, World of Warcraft receiving much more major updates and such.

This will be a huge turning point for Activision Blizzard as a publisher. They will have a much larger financial banking to let them experiment more with their games, giving their studios way more freedom than ever before.

They won’t just be restricted to creating cash grab games such as Call of Duty, they will have much more freedom to create games the way their studios want to. This will increase the variation in their games, and provide gamers with more memorable and experimental content than there has been for a while within the company. Oh, and we might hopefully see a Sekiro 2 as well, which will be a Microsoft exclusive most likely.


Conclusion

Microsoft’s purchase of Activision Blizzard is by far one of the biggest moments in gaming history. This marks the start of a whole new era for the companies, and will ensure that there is always more to look forward to within the future!


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