Today is a good day to play. We have completed the acquisition of Activision Blizzard and are welcoming Activision Blizzard and its businesses to Microsoft Gaming.

Activision, Blizzard, and King publish some of the most played and most beloved franchises in gaming history, from Pitfall to Call of Duty, Warcraft to Overwatch, Candy Crush Saga to Farm Heroes Super Saga. By combining Xbox with Activision Blizzard’s skill, knowledge, and amazing legacy of games, we will bring the joy and community of gaming to even more players around the world.

We are eager to learn from their creativity, exchange insights and best practices, and empower our new colleagues to bring their visions to the widest possible audience. And today, we officially start the work of bringing more groundbreaking games to more players than ever before and across new platforms from mobile to cloud streaming. We also begin the work to make Activision, Blizzard, and King’s muchloved library of games available in Game Pass and other platforms — we’ll have more to share in the coming months.

We couldn’t be more excited that Activision Blizzard employees are our colleagues, co-workers, and teammates. Bobby Kotick has agreed to remain in his role through the end of 2023, reporting directly to me, to ensure a smooth and seamless integration. We look forward to working together as a unified team and we will share more updates on our new organizational structure in the coming months.

I‘d like to give a very special and heartfelt thanks to everyone who helped make this acquisition possible. We couldn’t have accomplished this without your dedication.

Over the coming weeks, I’ll be visiting the Activision, Blizzard, and King offices, along with members of our Gaming Leadership Team. We’ll have the opportunity to welcome our new colleagues at our next virtual all-hands for Xbox employees, and for the greater Microsoft community, we’ll discuss this and more in the November 8 session of the Company Strategy Series.

Together, we can unlock a world of possibilities for players and creators.

Phil

Read Xbox Chief Phil Spencer’s Memo Welcoming Activision Blizzard to Microsoft - The Verge

I must have missed something I thought those rights only included the right to stream those games, not the right to distribute a license to the game in itself. This would normally only be of value to those offering BYOG streaming service

So it's either 1 of three things here:

1) The deal with Ubisoft actually includes more than simple streaming right?

2) Ubisoft is also offering BYOG streaming (feel I should know but don't for lack of interest in Ubisoft's offering lol)

3) Ubisoft has negotiated with MS for the right to distribute license to some ABK content (unrelated to the deal). 

I'm from Germany so I obviously know how bad Xbox consoles sell in Europe but there's still a lot of stuff you have to consider. Xbox releases all their games on Gamepass. Xbox has the highest ratio of game downloads compared to physical sales. Gamepass also has many games of other studios + the Access to EA Play.

So yeah, we all know that Xbox consoles do bad in Europe but some store shelves about games don't really tell anything considering how Xbox gamers are already mostly all digital.

It's not the same but there's nobody who would ever say how bad Google is doing because you see no Android games in the shops. 

And when there also won't be any PS games anymore in 5 years then there's also nobody who will say "PS is dead" or anything. Because then it's obviously "PS sells everything digital"

I'm also not an Xbox owner anymore but I'm still only Xbox (talking about the console manufacturers) and I play mostly on Gamepass nowadays. Steam is only second to me. 

While I understand where you are coming from, this is not the games market.  MS keeping or not keeping something multiplat is based on not the cares of gamers but on winning and gaining marketshare compared to P&L.  MS would have if they could, make all ABK games exclusive just like they made all BGS games exclusive or will make them exclusive because that is the gaming market.

While this always sound good in gamers head, for a business its really not sound to build up studios from the ground up.  It cost millions to develop and get a new IP to market.  It takes years to build the right team of experienced individuals to accomplish this task and a miss could cost that company a lot of money.  So for any business, the best approach is to always gain experience through acquisitions just like MS has done then waste years building up a team and a new IP and then it be a miss and all that effort, time and resources are a waste.  So if Sony cares about WRPG, they will definitely purchase an experienced developer with a strong IP or brand because business wise that is the fastest and safest route to success.

Sorry but I removed those images in the quote because they were causing an horrific loading time for me.

The VGChartz image uploader is horrid for loading.

Yay! ABK deal is FINALLY over. That was dragged out much longer than I thought it would be. Can't wait to get Diablo and CoD into Gamepass.

Not just for you. For me as well.

Mostly the same but with an extra part about the culture 👀

"Don't be a dickhead"