In a posts Tuesday tells Microsoft that they have acquired game publisher Activision Blizzard. The sum the companies have agreed on is 68.7 billion dollars, which is equivalent to about 603 billion kroner.
The acquisition includes all game studios in Activision Blizzard’s catalog. Among those highlighted in the message are Blizzard Entertainment, Beenox, Demonware, Digital Legends, High Moon Studios, Infinity Ward, King, Major League Gaming, Radical Entertainment, Raven Software, Sledgehammer Games, Toys for Bob and Treyarch.
This means that Xbox in one fell swoop has secured the rights to well-known games such as Warcraft, Call of Duty, Candy Crush, Overwatch, Crash Bandicoot, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, Diablo, Starcraft and a host of others.
Bobby Kotick continues as boss
Activision Blizzard has received the most attention since the summer of 2021 due to internal scandals. During pLast summer, the company was sued by the California government over poor working conditions for the employees.
In the wake of the lawsuit, the top manager has Bobby Kotick also been charged for having deliberately covered several of the cases. It does not seem as if the acquisition will have visible changes in the structure of the company at the moment.
– Bobby Kotick will continue as head of Activision Blizzard, and he and his team will continue to focus on strengthening the company’s culture and accelerating the company’s growth, it says in a press release sent out in tandem with the announcement.
At the moment, Activision Blizzard is still trading on its own, but after all the details about the sale have been completed, the management of the company will respond directly to Xbox CEO Phil Spencer.
Strengthens the Game Pass catalog
For Xbox consumers, the purchase will be most noticeable on a bolster of the offer in Xbox’s Game Pass service. Game Pass is a subscription solution that provides access to a library of games.
– When everything is ready, we will offer as many games from Activision Blizzard as possible on Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass, both old and new games from their catalog, Spencer says in the post.
The Game Pass service now has over 25 million subscribers, according to Microsoft.
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