Microsoft Officially Completes Activision Blizzard Acquisition
It’s official, Call of Duty is now part of Xbox. Earlier this morning, Microsoft finally closed its most awaited deal and purchased Activision Blizzard for a whopping $69 billion making it the biggest acquisition in history.
First announced in January 2022, the deal faced dozens of hurdles from several antitrust officials, and a few hours ago the UK’s CMA gave the green light, clearing everything the tech giant needed to close the deal.
CMA’s main concern revolved around cloud gaming and to solve this, Microsoft sold cloud-gaming rights to Ubisoft, to which they said:
All the games that are coming from Activision Blizzard in the next 15 years and those games that exist now, we have those streaming rights in perpetuity.
Ubisoft
Microsoft Gaming CEO and Xbox head Phil Spencer was excited to make Acitivision’s work and impact on the gaming culture a part of Microsoft. He says,
I’ve long admired the work at Activision Blizzard, and King, and the impact they’ve had on gaming, entertainment, and pop culture,” noting that some of his most memorable gaming moments happened in games Activision Blizzard and mobile giant King created. “It is incredible to welcome such legendary teams to Xbox
Phil Spencer
However, apart from the good news, the bad news here is that these games won’t be around Game Pass any time soon. But the Game Pass X account did make a statement regarding this saying that they “can now begin” working on this so there’s still hope.
With Activision Blizzard, King, and no surprise YOU on their side, Microsft is looking at a straight path to becoming the second-biggest gaming company in the world, surpassing Sony.
Read More: Microsoft and Activision Deal, All You Need to Know