Microsoft Acquires Activision Blizzard

If you had 70 billion dollars lying around, what would you do with it? We can’t confirm our own choices here at Howchoo, but we can talk about what Microsoft did with it this week. At the cost of a whopping estimated $75.5 billion, Microsoft has acquired Activision Blizzard in an all cash deal. As the most expensive acquisition in Microsoft’s history, this deal makes Microsoft the third-largest video game company right now (just after Sony and Tencent).

Not only are they getting a bunch of Activision Blizzard franchises, they also now have to deal with the legal and moral mess that Activision is currently entrenched in. We won’t go into that here. Instead, let’s focus on how this news has affected the tech industry already.

While Activision’s shares dropped 27% in the past year, GameStop and even Sony’s shares fell following the merger news. GameStop has been in a consistent loss over the past few months, but Microsoft buying up Activision could only make things worse for them. Sony shares fell over 12%!

Both Microsoft and Activision are big vendors to GameStop (and stores like it), meaning a merger between the two could change the video game economy. If Microsoft chooses to make AAA titles exclusive to Xbox, software sales for physical stores could plummet. Sony’s position as console leader is now threatened as Xbox could gain exclusives for popular titles like Warcraft, Diablo, and Call of Duty.