Last week we all woke up to news that took the gaming world by surprise. Juggernaut Activision Blizzard, a pioneer in the music industry, was bought by Microsoft, making the company their new addition to the Xbox family.
While the purchase still needs to be approved by the law to avoid monopoly conflicts, something that has haunted Microsoft in the past, the transaction was settled for the modest sum of 70 thousand million dollars. This is not a joke of a number, considering Microsoft paid only 7.5 billion dollars for Bethesda last year.
Activision is known for being the first 3rd party game company in the history of video games, when some unhappy employees from Atari decided to go their own way. Back in the Atari era, they have released titles such as River Raid and Pitfall. Games that pushed the archaic hardware to its limits.
Somewhere around 2007, Blizzard, owner of franchises like Warcraft and Diablo merged with Activision and formed Activision Blizzard.
Activision is relevant these days for being behind franchises like Crash Bandicoot, Spyro and their biggest hit Call of Duty, which now have a free to play version called Call of Duty Vanguard which welcomes all players for free as it’s shown on Sknr.
The Family members
So, what are the most valuable assets from Activision that now are a part of the Xbox family? At least for gamers, what Xbox users are more excited about are games like Diablo, Spyro and Crash Bandicoot.
Besides, Call of Duty is always a great contestant and one of the main incomes for Activision. It’s important not to leave casual gamers behind. Casual gamers, without knowing it, bring profit to the industry without a doubt.
The variety in casual gaming does not end just with mobile games, we also have a wide variety of online casino games you can find at VSO where gamers can find their favorite online casino games, that can be played from any cell phone, PC or tablet as long as you have internet access. Huge jackpots are in the game to spoil players from all around the world.
When talking about mobile gaming we can’t leave out the undisputed champion: Candy Crush. Believe it or not, the money making game belongs to Activision, thus Microsoft if the merge takes place finally.
Bizzard has its own franchises as well, being Diablo on top of the mountain.
The Xbox Effect
What started slowly with Microsoft buying some small studios and making alliances with EA Play to be included in their star service Gamepass, has been growing during the last two years where Xbox owns a huge part of the gaming industry as Eurogamer shows. Bethesda and, of course, Activision are the most impressive acquisitions.
For now, we can’t confirm or deny if the Activision Blizzard catalog will be entirely available on Gamepass as it has happened with Bethesda but for sure, Microsoft will try to make their brand even bigger than it currently is.
This was definitely a big blow, and even a wakeup call, to Sony who seems to keep staying behind without doing much to avoid losing ground and prefer to live from their past success.
Conclusion
While Xbox is yet to find their place in Japan where its market is considerably weaker. They keep on trying by adding titles like Yakuza and a huge number of Sega and Atlus games to Gamepass.
Japan wants Japanese game companies such as Nintendo and Sony, and that will always be a challenging market for Microsoft.
But for the time being, Xbox keeps trying by providing its fans with fantastic and powerful hardware that integrates software with an excess of content to enjoy for very little money. Microsoft has been putting all their eggs into Gamepass to stand out over its competitors and trying to boost a business model that has proven to work in other media forms such as music, movies and shows.
As big as the gaming community is, the huge majority of gamers pick a platform every five to eight years mostly. Most average consumers don’t own more than one console at a time, so Microsoft is putting everything out to encourage gamers to take the leap of faith and consider their products as the preferred gaming option.
