Microsoft Buying Activision Blizzard is Both Good and Bad for Gamers
The gaming community received a pretty shocking announcement earlier today (January 18) of Microsoft buying powerhouse gaming company Activision Blizzard for nearly $70 billion. XBox will now be the exclusive home for several extremely popular games now. This news is good, but also bad, for gamers.
Microsoft is not playing around anymore when it comes to gaming. Since they introduced their XBox console in 2001, the gaming system has lagged behind both Nintendo and Sony's PlayStation. With this purchase, and last year's purchase of ZeniMax, Microsoft now has ahold of some of the most popular video game franchises.
It was announced in September of 2021 that Microsoft had purchased ZeniMax Media which included game publisher Bethesda. That purchase alone brought the game franchises of Doom, Fallout, The Elder Scrolls and many others under the Microsoft umbrella. The acquisition of Activision Blizzard brings the game franchises of Call of Duty, Overwatch, Diablo, World of Warcraft, StarCraft and the mobile game Candy Crush under their wing now.
This also means the one time mascot for PlayStation, Crash Bandicoot, will now be an exclusive game for XBox if a new entry is made. Crazy times, gamers, crazy times. Remember this commercial?
The Good for Gamers
Activision Blizzard has been under fire lately as reports came out of sexual assault claims at it's studios in California. The claims became so rampant that the State of California began investigating the company. Activision Blizzard's CEO Bobby Kotick knew of the incidents, also, but never acted to prevent or punish those that carried out these acts. One female employee even committed suicide because of the harassment she received.
Many of those offending employees have since been fired and many more will be fired with this acquisition, including Bobby Kotick. That will bring an improvement to that workplace for everyone that remains.
The Bad for Gamers
It's pretty simple, Call of Duty, Overwatch, Diablo and many others will no longer be available on other platforms in the future. Other platforms meaning PlayStation or Nintendo. That's a big blow for Sony as Call of Duty is always a huge seller on that platform. It has been said that this purchase may not be to have these games as XBox exclusive titles, it just could mean that XBox users could have access to these games before the other platforms. That all remains to be seen, though.
All in all, this was some very surprising news in the gaming world today. Personally, I've never played an XBox system. I haven't played a Call of Duty game since Modern Warfare 3 on the PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii. I've never played Overwatch or Diablo. So I'm not too concerned with this purchase. Fans of those games, however, will either have to switch from PlayStation or just play them on PC from now on.
We'll see, however. The gaming landscape is ever changing and this change is huge.