Spending nearly 70 billion USD to acquire the game company, what does Microsoft plan to do?

Microsoft Corporation has just announced that it will acquire the “big” in the field of video games Activision Blizzard. The $68.7 billion deal is believed to be the largest-ever acquisition by software maker Microsoft, nearly three times larger than its 2016 acquisition of LinkedIn.

Following the above statement, Activision shares immediately rose 27% in today’s trading session. Activision is currently the publisher of many famous games such as Call of Duty or Diablo, but has been entangled in many controversies surrounding an internal sexual abuse scandal in recent months. Many employees involved in the allegations have been fired.

After Activision hands over to Microsoft, Mr. Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision, will continue to hold this position during the transition. However, due to a lot of criticism related to the scandal, Mr. Bobby is said to be leaving Microsoft soon.

Before that, Microsoft also poured capital strongly into the game field. This giant bought Mojang, the publisher of Minecraft, for $ 2.5 billion in 2014. Last year, Microsoft also made a deal to buy game publisher Bethesda for $ 7.5 billion.

Microsoft’s calculations

The latest acquisition is expected to contribute a lot to Microsoft’s long-term vision: To compete directly with Meta (Facebook’s parent company) in the race to hegemony in the metaverse virtual universe – the field that has been applied high in the gaming industry.

The deal is expected to help Microsoft compete directly with Meta in the virtual universe race

Many expect this combination to increase user reach and replace many other traditional online activities. Mr. Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, previously mentioned this potential of the metaverse:

“When it comes to the vision for the metaverse, we want to be more than just a single centralized metaverse. We need to be supported in the metaverse platform, an ecosystem of content, commerce, and app store. big”.

Once the deal is completed, Microsoft will immediately create the third largest gaming company in the world, behind only China’s Tencent and PlayStation maker Sony.

According to Bobby Kotick, Activision cannot compete in the new world of games on its own. “Look at companies like Facebook, Google, Amazon or Apple, especially companies like Tencent. They grew and we realized Activision needed a partner to make it a reality.”

For its part, Microsoft also hopes this merger can “bring joy and unity in gaming to everyone”, the Microsoft CEO said.

Microsoft wants to take advantage of the well-positioned Activision segment to develop mobile games

Mobile games are currently the fastest growing segment. This is also where Activision comes in. The company owns King, the maker of one of the most beloved games of all time, Candy Crush. Microsoft wants to take advantage of this to develop mobile games.

“We all know the number one gaming device on the planet is the mobile phone,” said Phil Spencer, Xbox director who was recently appointed CEO of Microsoft Gaming.

In addition, Microsoft is also ambitious to build a game empire large enough for users to directly access without paying through app stores, such as the App Store.

“Today, we face increased competition from companies that make revenue from distributing rather than selling and registering games like Microsoft. Therefore, we need to innovate and invest more in content, thereby reducing the constraint on distribution,” said Microsoft CEO.

In addition, the software giant is also ambitious to bring some of Activision’s key revenue-driving services to its cloud gaming platform, such as Xbox Game Pass. The deal also allows Microsoft to tap into information from distinct content creators and gaming worlds.