News, Reviews & Betas which includes large community peer support If you’ve been reading Neowin for the past few days, you know that it’s been a busy week in the Microsoft-verse due to a major acquisition, and a new program from Google. Find out more in our recap!
If you closely follow the Microsoft-verse, you know that this was the busiest week of the year so far in terms of the flow of news. This is due to a major acquisition, several Windows updates, and an interesting endeavor from Google. It’s possible that you might have missed some events that transpired over the past few weeks, but fret not, we will cover them in our weekly digest for January 15 – January 21. The biggest news of the week was undoubtedly Microsoft’s announcement that it is buying games publisher Activision Blizzard in an all-cash deal worth a whopping $68.7 billion. This gives the company ownership of multiple studios including Treyarch, Raven Software, and Infinity Ward, as well as several popular IP including Call of Duty, Overwatch, World of Warcraft, and Diablo, among others. The deal has been approved by the respective board of directors of both parties but is yet to go through shareholder and regulatory nods, something Microsoft hopes to finalize before July 2023. This acquisition adds 10,000 more employees to Microsoft’s workforce and makes it the third-largest game company globally in terms of revenue, behind Tencent and Sony. Given the scale and nature of the transaction, there was obviously lots of excitement and concerns in the gaming sphere and outside of it. For starters, the president of the World Bank criticized Microsoft for spending billions of dollars in a western game company instead of using it to solve the problems of developing countries. Meanwhile, the newly appointed CEO of Microsoft Gaming Phil Spencer stated that he would love to leverage from this deal and revive dormant Activision Blizzard IPs such as Hexen, much to the delight of the game’s fans. Both Spencer and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella also penned separate memos to their staff following the announcement of the acquisition. The former focused on the added value to Game Pass – which is now 25 million subscribers strong – while the latter also noted the move as a bet on the metaverse; whatever that may be. Microsoft has clearly stated that until the deal finalizes sometime next year, both companies will continue to operate independently, but once the acquisition is complete Activision will report to Microsoft. One thing that is still pending an official and explicit confirmation from Microsoft is regarding the fate of Activision’s current and problematic CEO Bobby Kotick. There have been reports that the executive will depart once the transaction is complete – likely with a golden parachute – but nothing can be said for certain yet given the dynamic and incomplete nature of the situation.
