It’s been a big Tuesday for the game industry. This morning, Microsoft announced that it has entered a deal to purchase Activision Blizzard, the largest third
It’s been a big Tuesday for the game industry. This morning, Microsoft announced that it has entered a deal to purchase Activision Blizzard, the largest third-party games publisher in the world. Microsoft is paying nearly $70 billion for Activision Blizzard, making the $7.5 billion it paid for ZeniMax Media and its subsidiaries a year ago look like a paltry sum. Image: Eric Broder Van Dyke/Shutterstock This acquisition is shocking to most primarily because of the price tag attached to Activision Blizzard. At $68.7 billion, this is the largest acquisition the gaming world has ever seen by a long shot. Not only that, but it’s up there with some of the biggest acquisitions across all industries. This also seems like an acquisition that only Microsoft could have made. Sony Group Corporation, as a conglomerate, has a total market cap of $156.64 billion, while Nintendo has a market cap of 6.94 trillion Japanese yen (about $60 billion). Microsoft, by comparison, has a market cap of $2.28 trillion (via Companies Market Cap), so while these three companies might be fierce competitors in the gaming space, Microsoft has way more money at its disposal than either Sony or Nintendo do. While Sony and Nintendo have enough to possibly buy another major publisher with a lower value, Microsoft is really the only one that could shell out a sum like $68.9 billion for Activision Blizzard. Microsoft is throwing its resources around with this acquisition, as it’s making deals that its biggest competitors can’t hope to match. While Activision and Blizzard are big names themselves, those aren’t the only two companies included in this deal. Like ZeniMax before it, Activision has collected a number of subsidiary studios throughout the years, and these are all included in the agreement with Microsoft. Activision’s subsidiary studios that will now live under the Microsoft umbrella include Beenox, Demonware, Digital Legends, High Moon Studios, Infinity Ward, Radical Entertainment, Raven Software, Sledgehammer Games, Solid State, Toys for Bob, and Treyarch. Some of these studios will be familiar to players already. For instance, Infinity Ward, Sledgehammer Games, and Treyarch are all high-profile studios working on the Call of Duty franchise (with help from studios like Raven Software), while Toys for Bob has taken the lead on Crash Bandicoot and Spyro games.
