The recent announcement of a series of major acquisitions has seen Microsoft become a much bigger company in gaming, one of the biggest in the world, in fact. Previously, the company completed a landmark all-cash deal with ZeniMax Media that saw Redmond-based Microsoft spend $7 billion on the trove of Bethesda and Zenimax studios. And now, they’re getting bigger.
This week, Microsoft also recently announced plans to acquire Activision Blizzard for nearly $70 billion. Now, they’ve also acquired a major bundle of Activision-Blizzard IPs as well. That would mean that all the properties and studios owned and run by Blizzard and Activision will fall under the Microsoft umbrella. Some folks are concerned about exclusivity agreements, but those fears seem unfounded.
The deal is pending regulator approval, and is slated to be complete sometime in the fiscal year 2023. This would mean that by June 2023, the deal will be finished if everything goes to plan. This would mean that studios such as Infinity Ward, Raven Software, Sledgehammer Games, Toys for Bob and Call of Duty stewards Treyarch all fall under one proverbial roof. Having so many IPs and studios in their financials is sure to be great for their ability to support future expansion, as well as providing games for future PC and Xbox lineups. Having a huge library of IPs to mine for licensing rights could also see some new games and tie-in media pop up.
All this depends on how the negotiations with various rights-holders goes. Microsoft might not be able to secure all of these properties, but some of the big names like Call of Duty, World of Warcraft and Diablo are a sure thing.
All the new Microsoft IPs
The list of IPs that could potentially be owned by Xbox following Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard includes:
- Blur
- Caesar
- Call of Duty
- Candy Crush
- Crash Bandicoot
- Diablo
- DJ Hero
- Empire Earth
- Gabriel Knight
- Geometry Wars
- Guitar Hero
- Gun
- Hearthstone
- Heroes of the Storm
- Hexen
- Interstate ’76
- King’s Quest
- Laura Bow Mysteries
- The Lost Vikings
- Overwatch
- Phantasmagoria
- Pitfall
- Police Quest
- Prototype
- Quest for Glory
- Singularity
- Skylanders
- Soldier of Fortune
- Space Quest
- Spyro the Dragon
- StarCraft
- Tenchu (legacy games)
- TimeShift
- Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater
- True Crime
- World of Warcraft
- Zork
