Activision Blizzard Acquired by Microsoft

Microsoft has just announced that it has officially acquired the world’s leading game studio, Activision Blizzard. In order to bought the publisher for Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, and Diablo game publishers; reached a starking price of USD 68.7 billion.

Microsoft’s move to buy Activision Blizzard; is a way for the company formed by Bill Gates to compete with Sony and Tencent in the game industry. Quoting from The Verge, Microsoft is already planning to add a line of Activision game titles to Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass after this deal is completed.

“Once completed, we will be offering as many Activision Blizzard games as possible on Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass,” said Microsoft Games CEO Phil Spencer.

Ready to add Game Pass for Xbox players

Furthermore, Xbox Game Pass currently has 25 million subscribers. In order to satisfy players who subscribe to their service, Microsoft continues to acquire studios to improve its services.

“We’re investing heavily in content, communities and the cloud to usher in a new era of gaming that puts players and content creators first,” said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Not only that, he also said, Microsoft wants to make games safe for all players, inclusive, and accessible to everyone.

The discontinuation of Xbox One

Microsoft has officially announced that it has stopped producing one of its game consoles, the Xbox One. It is pretty known by now that Microsoft initially discontinued the Xbox One X and Xbox One S digital; before the launch of the Xbox Series X.

They then quietly stopped producing the Xbox One S at the end of 2020. Reported by The Verge, the cessation of production finally allowed retailers to only sell the remaining stock of the game console.

“To focus on Xbox Series X/S products, we are ceasing production for all Xbox One consoles at the end of 2020,” said Cindy Walker as Senior Director of Xbox Console Product Marketing.