I don't agree with the original posters points.  I see no reason for Xbox gamers to be upset about the deal.  But Microsoft could have spent a few billion making a 10 year agreement to put all of Activision games on gamepass day 1 and kept a bunch of that money hiring and developing more ips.

They already have Call of Duty on their system. Assuming it does go multiplatform, I don't see why this would disincentivize Microsoft from making more new first party content, outside of Activision. The market for non-Activision games is pretty much the same as it was before.

The only difference now is that, assuming COD goes exclusive and other stuff, then Microsoft might not want to cannibalize that market, and would not release a product in direct competition. Which, actually may make things more diverse.

Then Microsoft would have been trashed online for having rewarded ABK horrendous management policies with juicy contract. 

They would also have missed the opportunity to grow their employee count by 9500 in a single transaction. (which would take 10+ year to do if you only try to grow organically and 5+year to see some result after that). The Initiative (56 employees in 4 years) does not exactly tell a story of how easy it is to grow organically in the industry right now. 

They would also have no way to prevent every single studio of becoming CoD dedicated, which would ultimately make a 10 years ABK agreement a 10 year CoD agreement.

Microsoft would also not have ended up with the numerous IP's of ABK and no way to revisit one at their choosing either through ABK studios, MS own studios or MS publishing studio with third party contract which will be all possible after the transaction close. 

I don't really see the "single formula" between Ratchet & Clank, Spider-man, God of War, Gran Turismo, Astrobot, Returnal, MLB The Show and Horizon Zero Dawn

Activision has been largely neglecting their library of IPs since at least 2016 in favor of putting most of their effort behind Call of Duty, to the point that you might as well call them "The Call of Duty Company." I doubt MS would be as neglectful. Sure, Activision has made a few token efforts with their other IPs over the past six years, but, aside from Crash 4, they were all remasters of old games (I'm not counting Sekiro and Destiny 2 as those are made by other third parties). Activision has greatly reduced their output over the past few years, with this year being the absolute worst with Modern Warfare II being their only release.

MS has done a decent job in recent years in trying to leverage their existing library of IPs, both in-house and acquired. I doubt they'd just squander Activision by having them be mainly "Call of Duty Studios."

As for the Blizzard side of things, the vast majority of the players of their games are on PC anyway, and I doubt MS will make them stop turning out reliable series like Starcraft and Diablo.

More games for game pass, so why wouldn't we be excited? Hoping this deal goes through faster, so we get another studio or publisher.

And what's the difference now? Where do you think that money from the acquisition goes, right into the pockets of the shareholders and current management. This deal is very likely the reason why the board kept Kotick on, and now he's still going to be there for yet another year to leave with a golden parachute after.

This deal is rewarding the horrendous management policies...

But as a silver lining, it can ideed not get much worse, should get better after the deal goes trough. If it gets blocked, the stale mate just got extended for 2 years for nothing :/

ABK lost much value when the story broke out, Microsoft took the opportunity too buy the studio for an amount that would have been rejected prior to the allegations. Calling that a reward is really stretching's things out.

This deal is very likely the reason why the board kept Kotick on
now that's some revisionist history, it has been more than 6 months since the allegation when the deal was announced, Kotick refused to leave all the while and no shareholders wanted to do anything about it. But yeah of course it's Microsoft fault -_- .

This is for long term. CoD this and CoD that. There are also Diablo, WoW, Starcraft... Microsoft knows too well how to orchestrate the song (I want Guitar Hero 1-2 back).

I really don't get the concern about how Microsoft, the trillion $ company which makes over $60bn in profits per year, spends its money, it isn't like they can't do both and they are doing both, Lol. They're acquiring and mass hiring, they're developing IPs and buying IPs.

It's unlikely that $69bn would have been used for funding IPs and hires, it was just cash sitting in the bank. It would have likely been used on a different acquisition, whether for Xbox or another Microsoft division, they were in negotiations to acquire Discord for $10bn, they were in negotiations to acquire Pinterest for near $50bn. They were looking to spend the money on an acquisition.

Putting all of Activision-Blizzard's titles day one on Game Pass would have cost an absolute fortune too (easily into the billions across 10 years) and there is no guarantee that ABK would accept the offers as some major publishers (such as Take-Two) are on record as being reluctant about putting AAA's onto Game Pass on launch and not a single Activision-Blizzard title has been on Game Pass to my knowledge unless I'm forgetting one.