The acquisition of Activision Blizzard is a double-edged sword for Microsoft and Xbox … The American giant faces “difficult” targets

Game News The acquisition of Activision Blizzard is a double-edged sword for Microsoft and Xbox … The American giant faces “difficult” targets

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Activision Blizzard to bring money to Microsoft

If there is one takeover that the video game industry will not soon forget, it is the acquisition of Activision-Blizzard by Microsoft.

It must be said that since the official announcement and the disclosure of the amount involved (remember, 70 billion dollars), several long months of legal battles took place before Microsoft could finally go ahead with its acquisition. Since then, the Xbox Game Pass has already added some gems from Activision or Blizzard such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III or Diablo IV and the American giant is preparing to welcome the next Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 to its subscription platform on the day of its release.

With such additions, Microsoft wants to be successful and generate even more subscriptions to its Xbox Game Pass service. To achieve this result, they were not satisfied with the acquisition of Activision Blizzard since a recent report Bloomberg points out The Richmond-based company spends no less than a billion dollars a year to supply Game Pass with third-party games.

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But sets difficult goals

But despite everything, Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard is not necessarily the goose that lays the golden eggs that everyone expects. Because, as is often the case in a capitalist world, such an acquisition (and especially such an amount spent on it) also means a drastic increase in the goals to be achieved. According to the Bloomberg report Due to this historic acquisition, Xbox is now facing “difficult” sales and profit targets.

Understand that now that they have acquired an industry giant, Xbox and Microsoft expect even higher sales than beforeand that it is not necessarily obvious that this is happening. This certainly explains the more than controversial decision that Phil Spencer was able to make by closing numerous studios and laying off an alarming number of employees. Some time ago he admitted that he “make difficult decisions” and took over the management of a company with very high demands. It remains to be seen whether their bet will be a success, but it must be admitted that it is nothing else The year 2025 could well be a happy one for MicrosoftAs a reminder, in the latter case, some highly anticipated games such as Fable, DOOM The Dark Ages and Avowed are likely to arrive, not to mention the big titles expected for late 2024 such as Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and Indiana Jones of the Ancient Circle.