After 21 months of scrutiny by regulatory agencies around the world, the US internet giant Microsoft has finally successfully incorporated the gaming company Activision Blizzard under its umbrella.
On October 13th local time, after the UK Market and Competition Authority (CMA) announced approval for the transaction between Microsoft and Activision Blizzard, according to Microsoft's official disclosure documents, the company completed the purchase of Activision Blizzard for a total price of approximately $68.7 billion (approximately RMB 501.89 billion), and Activision Blizzard officially became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Microsoft.
In addition, with the completion of this transaction, Microsoft has surpassed Nintendo and become the world's third largest gaming company in revenue, second only to Tencent and Sony.
Microsoft also welcomed the joining of Activision Blizzard as soon as possible. Microsoft CEO Phil Spencer wrote on the Microsoft Xbox official website: "Today, we officially welcome Activision Blizzard and its team to join the Xbox. They are the most popular and popular publisher in the history of gaming consoles, PCs, and mobile games. From Pitfall to Call of Duty, from Warcraft to Watchman, from Candy Crush Saga to Farm Heroes Saga They have enabled players from all over the world to break through the boundaries of the game
At the same time, he also stated that games in several split departments under Activision Blizzard (Activision, Blizzard, King) will gradually be launched on Game Pass (Microsoft's game subscription system) and other game platforms.
On the other hand, Blizzard's official website has also announced that Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick will continue to hold his current position until the end of the year.
According to Activision Blizzard's financial report for the 2022 fiscal year, its revenue data is not ideal, with a total annual revenue of approximately $7.5 billion (approximately 54.79 billion RMB), a year-on-year decrease of about 15%. I hope that Activision Blizzard can produce better game works than it currently has after having Blizzard as a backup. "A veteran player of" Blizzard Family Bucket "said in an interview with a 21st Century Economic Report reporter that he believes that if Activision Blizzard can continue to produce high-quality games based on classic IPs such as" Call of Duty "and" Warcraft "after being" included "by Microsoft, Perhaps it can successfully save the company's reputation.
Looking back at the progress of this century merger and acquisition case, due to the huge transaction amount and the involvement of multiple stakeholders, both Microsoft and Activision Blizzard have been working hard to facilitate the final transaction of this skyrocketing transaction.
After the San Francisco Federal Court rejected the preliminary injunction request from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) against Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard, how to persuade CMA to release the deal has become Microsoft's biggest headache.
In the end, Microsoft chose to compromise in the cloud gaming business module, promising that it would not purchase the cloud gaming rights of Activision Blizzard (including new games), but would sell it to the independent third-party gaming company Ubisoft before the acquisition was officially completed. Meanwhile, Ubisoft can directly provide cloud game versions of Activision Blizzard products to all consumers and cloud game service providers.