Microsoft is starting the new year with a real bang. On its official blog, the company announces that it plans to acquire the well-known publisher Activision Blizzard. The deal isn’t in the bag yet, but it seems like the Xbox team will soon get an addition.

After Bethesda: Microsoft wants to grab Activision Blizzard

It was only in the fall of 2020 that Microsoft shocked the gaming industry with the announcement that it would acquire Bethesda’s parent company Zenimax Media. Today, almost one and a half years later, the next hammer follows. In an official blog post, the company behind Xbox announces, that they now also intend to buy Activision Blizzard (Source: Microsoft).

According to the description, the deal will not take place until fiscal year 2023, but Microsoft has already announced some details about the planned major purchase. The acquisition of Activision Blizzard, for example, would be 68.7 billion US dollars cost. By way of comparison: The purchase of Zenimax cost Microsoft “only” around 8 billion US dollars at the time, while Take-Two forked out 13 billion US dollars for mobile games publisher Zynga a few weeks ago (source: spieletipps).

In other words, Microsoft’s new deal is in a completely different league.

Activision Blizzard soon to be part of Microsoft? What does this mean for gamers?

Activision Blizzard’s most successful brands include Warcraft, Call of Duty, Diablo, Overwatch and also Candy Crush. What exactly Microsoft plans to do with these is not directly clear from the blog entry. However, some of the text passages suggest that the company would use some of the games for this purpose, to further expand the Xbox Game Pass offering.

On the other hand, whether some of the series might additionally be offered console-exclusively for Xbox in the future remains open for now. For PlayStation gamers, the deal could have drastic consequences.But currently there seems to be no plans on the part of Microsoft to ban future games from Activision Blizzard from the Sony console.

Also open is how Microsoft will deal with the big sexism scandal Activision Blizzards will handle. Current CEO Bobby Kotick, who is at the center of the criticism, is expected to retain his position after the acquisition. At the same time, however, the Xbox team announced the following on Twitter:

“Xbox is committed to the goal of inclusion in all aspects of gaming. We are committing all teams to this standard. We look forward to extending our culture of proactive inclusion to the great teams at Activision Blizzard.”

However, in order to achieve this goal, Microsoft will need to make some changes. We’re curious to see what these will look like – assuming Microsoft actually puts its plan into action. We will keep you up to date.