Microsoft Acquisition of Activision: Which Franchises Does It Own Now?

Microsoft’s $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard doesn’t give the maker of Xbox and home of Halo control of everything important in console gaming. Sony still stands out with its strong portfolio of PlayStation exclusives, while Electronic Arts, Take-Two and Ubisoft continue to battle for position across platforms.

But it’s damn close to everything. Since 2014, when Redmond shook $2.5 billion out of its piggy bank to acquire Mojang and Minecraft, the company has been on an escalating buying spree that has now brought a who’s who directory of AAA games to its Xbox Game Pass library 25 million subscribers strong.

Blamed at the start of the Xbox One console generation in 2013 for an allegedly faltering interest in video games, Microsoft soon promised – under then-new Xbox boss Phil Spencer – a renewed, diamond-hard focus on games. the good games and nothing but the games. So help him, God, he did well. Here are all the major franchises, developers, and names in games Microsoft now controls.

gloriole

The sci-fi shooter series has always been a Microsoft-owned, Xbox-exclusive franchise. But for posterity’s sake, it should be noted that the company owns and controls this blockbuster intellectual property, which is just as strong and relevant with the launch of Halo infinity how it was when Halo: Combat Evolved debuted 20 years ago. Microsoft acquired series creator Bungie in 2000 and then formed 343 Industries to take control of Halo after Bungie parted ways with Microsoft and fulfilled its remaining obligations to the series.

war implements

Cliff Bleszinski’s Gears of War franchise, also exclusive to Xbox/Windows PC, was owned by Epic Games until Microsoft bought the property in early 2014. The company turned the series over to Black Tusk Studios, later renamed The Coalition, and hired industry heavyweight Rod Fergusson to oversee a remaster of the first war implements, Plus Gears of War 4 and gears 5. Like Halo, Gears has been a well-known IP anchor for Xbox Game Pass since that service launched in 2017. Fergusson left The Coalition for Blizzard Entertainment in 2020 to bring diablo 4 to terminate. With Tuesday’s news, Fergusson is officially a Microsoft employee again.

Minecraft

Image: Mojang/Xbox Game Studios

Xbox’s first major acquisition of a games franchise that wasn’t exclusive to their platforms was for Minecraft and its maker, the Sweden-based Mojang, seven months after the Gears of War deal closed. Though Microsoft spent $2.5 billion — its 10th-biggest acquisition since 2007 — on what started out as an indie sandbox and survival game on PC, the company took out Mojang with cash it literally had in the bank had and did nothing. since 2014, Minecraft has undergone 19 major revisions and has remained a core part of the Xbox and PC Game Pass library for both console and PC.

Hellblade, state of decay, wasteland, Double Fine and Obsidian’s Adventures

Image: Ninja Theory/Xbox Game Studios

At E3 2018, Microsoft announced it had acquired Ninja Theory, the makers of Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice (and DMC: Devil May Cry previously for Capcom) and Undead Labs, makers of the zombie survival series State of Decay, as well as two other studios (Compulsion Games, known for the 2018s We Happy Few, and Playground Games, which has been developing the Forza Horizon series since its inception in 2012).

Five months later, during its X018 presentation, Microsoft announced that it had added Obsidian Entertainment – the makers of Baldur’s Gate, Stand out: New Vegas, and pillars of eternity and its sequel – as well as InXile Entertainment, the studio behind the Wasteland RPG series and the latest adaptations of The Bard’s Tale.

Since then the sequels State of Decay 3, Wasteland 3, The Outer Worlds 2, and Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 have all been announced as PC and Xbox exclusives.

Microsoft followed that spending spree a year later by announcing at E3 2019 that it had picked up Tim Schafer’s Double Fine Productions, known for a fan-favorite catalogue Brutal Legend, costume search, and broken age. Since Microsoft acquired Double Fine, psychonauts 2, a sequel to the 2005 cult hit psychonauts which started as a crowdfunding project, was published by Xbox Game Studios.

Like Halo, Gears of War, and Minecraft before it, all of these titles and franchises are in the Xbox Game Pass library.

Stand out, The Elder Scrolls, Wolfstein, demise

Image: MachineGames/Bethesda Softworks

Up until Tuesday, it was hard to imagine that a bigger takeover than 2020’s deal would bring ZeniMax Media’s parade of AAA franchises and developers to the home of Xbox. Microsoft’s $8.1 billion acquisition of privately held ZeniMax — barely an eighth of Tuesday’s deal for Activision — earned Redmond a back catalog that includes Dishonored, Prey and The Evil Within; heavyweight franchises like The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Doom and Wolfenstein; a pioneering gaming brand in Quake; and Todd Howard’s next Zillion Hours RPG, starfield, which is scheduled to start in November this year.

Microsoft’s acquisition of Bethesda Softworks’ parent company hasn’t disrupted plans to ship two exclusive PlayStation consoles. death loop (September 2021) and GhostWire: Tokyo (postponed to 2022). But those deals were done before the takeover; Afterwards, Xbox boss Phil Spencer said the company would decide on a case-by-case basis whether new games from the ZeniMax family would be released on third-party platforms such as the PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch. Then, at E3 2021, Howard announced that starfield would indeed be Xbox/PC exclusive and launch day-and-date on Xbox Game Pass to bring even more exposure to this service. It’s likely, that The Elder Scrolls 6, announced below starfield 2018 will follow the same path.

And now: call of Duty, Diablo, over watch, warcraft, plus much more

Image: Blizzard Entertainment

Tuesday’s $68.7 billion deal would bring Microsoft’s number of in-house game development studios to 30. With them would come billion dollar cornerstones like the annual Call of Duty series and the seminal MMO World of Warcraft. Blizzard Entertainment’s Diablo and Overwatch franchises, both set to be re-released in 2023, could be the first games to be released by Microsoft once the deal closes. Not to mention King, the mobile game maker behind wildly popular franchises like Candy Crush.

And that’s not all. Activision’s back catalog contains the remasters Spyro Reignited trilogy, Tony Hawk‘s Pro Skaters 1+2, and Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s time as well as the franchises that preceded them. The company was also one of the last heavyweights to produce licensed non-sports video games with remakes of them GoldenEye 007, Transformers, Spider-Man and the Outdoor Series by Cabela. Guitar Hero and Skylanders, which the company has shut down in recent years, are still around if the music game and toys-to-life genres, respectively, ever make a comeback. and hell Cases! — the first blockbuster video game IP designed specifically for consoles – is a product of Activision.

Although year after year Microsoft has acquired a bestseller like Call of Duty and two A-list franchises for which every development is news, the purchase of Activision puts the company in control of a video game history that stretches back to the dawn of console gaming self.