After two years of negotiations Xbox has acquired Activision Blizzard King. Activision are some of the publishers of some of the most played and most beloved franchises in gaming history across console, PC, and mobile. Games like Pitfall, Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Candy Crush Saga, Farm Heroes Saga, Diablo, Guitar Hero, Starcraft, Hearthstone, and more. You can read Phil Spencer’s statement here the CEO of Microsoft Gaming.

Why did this happen? If we go back several years Activision and Blizzard were fraught with sexual assault allegations across multiple studios from the developers of Call of Duty to World of Warcraft to Overwatch. Nothing was being done about it and Activision CEO Bobby Kotick was not going to do anything either. This purchase also includes a generous severance package for the Activision CEO and he will be out by the end of 2023. This will not be a magic pill for the allegations and charges against the company but this acquisition will place the company under Microsoft that will make sure that these bad practices come to an end, or it will be their name that becomes besmirched next.

Xbox did negotiate with PlayStation that Call of Duty would remain multi-platform for the next ten years as Sony was constantly trying to stop this acquisition from going through. At the end of that time, it will be up to Xbox to decide whether to continue to work with PlayStation but I personally think that has a lot to do with PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan’s sudden retirement, is the mishandling of this acquisition, false statements and lies before the board as well as in the court systems. Phil Spencer has commented that it is best to keep Call of Duty multiplatform as that is what gamers expect as well as because it is a mass selling first person shooter franchise that you wouldn’t want to cut it’s sales by a large portion down to only the Xbox, PC, Switch platforms.

So what does this mean for gaming as a whole? Well, when it comes to the average gamer not a lot will change. A lot of your favorite games will still be available where they are. It is reasonable to assume all Call of Duty games will be on Xbox Game Pass at some point. Xbox has done the great service of enabling servers on older Call of Duty titles to ensure gamers can experience those incredible games from years and years ago just as they were at launch, a huge win for gaming history. In order to remain competitive in the market Xbox has made large acquisitions over the years to bolster its first party studios beyond Halo, Gears of War, and Forza offering a wider variety of games coming from their studios. I think it will be very exciting to see what these studios can do with a budget from Microsoft and the chance to create more unique IP that Activision notably hasn’t done since the early 2000’s.

What does it mean if you’re a fan of PlayStation? Well if you’re part of the console wars and want to argue about your favorite plastic box, this may seem like the end of the world to you. I would argue that had PlayStation made this acquisition, history would show that all these games would be exclusive to their service and NOT one would ever be seen on Xbox and they would be praised for doing so. There’s a unique double standard against Xbox here and the onus is on them to do what they want with their new properties. While I wouldn’t expect all games from ABK to be multiplatform, you can assume some will not be. Much like Bethesda’s Starfield, some games will be designated in the best interest to be an Xbox Studios exclusive title. So perhaps it is time to simply embrace gaming as a whole rather than choose sides. There will be benefits for owning each console/PC and the person who can own all of them ultimately wins when it comes to player choice of what game to play.

Below you can see a handy chart of Xbox’s first party studios composed by Klobrille. What do you think of the Xbox acquisition of Activision, Blizzard, King? Let me know in the comments below.