Microsoft announced in January last year that it would buy the world-famous game company Activision Blizzard for $69 billion. After that, the FTC (US Federal Trade Commission) did not accept the purchase and the parties sued. After 1.5 years, the case was concluded in favor of Microsoft today.
FTC loses: Microsoft wins Activision lawsuit!
Expected to profit from the Activision acquisition, Microsoft will have a wide variety of intellectual property and game development resources. It will be able to integrate game series such as Call of Duty, World of Warcraft and Candy Crush into its services such as Xbox Game Pass, as well as major game studios such as Blizzard Entertainment and Treyarch.
In addition, it is known that Activision has already reached more than 10 thousand employees. Therefore, these professionals will now come under the umbrella of Microsoft. Everyone in Activison, who did not accept this union, especially its ex-CEO Bobby Kotick, left the ship. There’s no one left to oppose the FTC because he lost the case.
Sony retaliates for Microsoft’s Activison-Blizzard move
Sony announced that it has acquired Bungie, the developer of famous games such as Destiny and Halo, for $ 3.6 billion.
It is stated that after Microsoft paid the agreed amount of 69 billion dollars for Activision, an integration process will take place around 1 year. However, it was also said that some steps will be taken in this process that will not disappoint the expectations of the players.
Particularly, it is expected that Activison games (all series) will be added to the Game Pass subscription system, which has taken the gaming world by storm, piece by piece, even if not once. Still, we’ll have to wait and see how Microsoft will follow.