Microsoft Games - What Motivates Activision Blizzard's Acquisition

VGC commented on CEO Satya Nadella's interview with the Financial Times.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has said the company's planned acquisition of Activision Blizzard is motivated by its desire to build "the next internet"

Xbox's parent company revealed last month that it intends to acquire Activision Blizzard in a $68.7 billion deal-the game industry's biggest ever by some distance.

In its announcement, the company said the move--which will give it ownership of franchises including Call of Duty, Warcraft, Overwatch, Crash Bandicoot and Guitar Hero--"will accelerate the growth in Microsoft's gaming business across mobile, PC, console and cloud and will provide building blocks for the metaverse".

While there's no universally accepted definition, the metaverse is a network of 3D virtual spaces where users can socialise, play, and work, and some envision it as a successor to the mobile internet.

In his first interview since the Activision deal was announced, Nadella discussed Microsoft's vision for the metaverse.

"Metaverse is essentially about creating games," he told the Financial Times. "It is about being able to put people, places, things [in] a physics engine and then having all the people, places, things in the physics engine relate to each other.

"You and I will be sitting on a conference room table soon with either our avatars or our holograms or even 2D surfaces with surround audio. Guess what? The place where we have been doing that forever . . . is gaming.

"And so, the way we will even approach the system side of what we're going to build for the metaverse is, essentially, democratise the game building . . . and bring it to anybody who wants to build any space and have essentially, people, places, [and] things digitised and relating to each other with their body presence."

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Metaverse? What? I thought that was Facebooks new gimmick. So Microsoft is on board with "the metaverse" too… ok-dokie. Put that internet into my vein and implant that brain chip,
I want to live in the metaverse! (honestly just being ironic here, I'm very sceptical of virtual worlds and the metaverse)

Welcome to the Microsoft User Dungeon

Worse idea for a MUD, ever.

Originally Posted by Arkadia7
Metaverse? What? I thought that was Facebooks new gimmick. So Microsoft is on board with "the metaverse" too… ok-dokie. Put that internet into my vein and implant that brain chip,
I want to live in the metaverse! (honestly just being ironic here, I'm very sceptical of virtual worlds and the metaverse)

MS wants their own Metaverse. Optimally, before FB has theirs. FB opened the race somewhat since they are fast losing their base of operation and are under pressure from many sides. So they need something new to "imprison" their users.

I can imagine using a Metaverse for work meetings, but at least for the foreseeable future not for some shitty mobile games where Overlord Zuck just wants to gather my info and sell it to the other lizardmen.

Originally Posted by Darkheart
Optimally, before FB has theirs. FB opened the race somewhat since they are fast losing their base of operation and are under pressure from many sides.

Yep, for the first time in their history FB anounced a falling number of active users, followed by the stock price losing $220 billion. Finally some good news on FB.

Okay, how many major game publishers have we now ? How many are left ? 3 ?

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer
Okay, how many major game publishers have we now ? How many are left ? 3 ?

Here is a ranking by revenue based on 2019/2020 financial data and obviously before the Actiblizz acquisition. As we can see, with the exception of Tencent, the platform holders are the top dogs. Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft are the giants and Tencent/NetEase are their Chinese counterparts (and business partners for market access … in essence, you can not publish a western game in China without Tencent being involved).

EA, Take Two, Bandai Namco and Square Enix are the midfielders. Finally, Ubi, Konami, SEGA and Capcom are only small gigs in comparison to the big guys.

Thanks for that explanation.