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If you haven’t heard, Microsoft has purchased Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion, setting off a megaton bomb in the video game world.
The reactions and hot takes are pouring in after Xbox CEO Phil Spencer announced that the company acquired Activision Blizzard at the top of the morning. With the deal now agreed to, that means Microsoft now owns Beenox, Demonware, Digital Legends, High Moon Studios, Infinity Ward, King, Major League Gaming, Radical Entertainment, Raven Software, Sledgehammer Games, Toys for Bob, Treyarch, and every team across Activision Blizzard.
The big question is whether Activision games like Call of Duty, which PlayStation owners have enjoyed for years, will become an Xbox exclusive? PlayStation owners can breathe a bit of sigh of relief for now based on comments from Phil Spencer directly responding to that matter. “I’ll just say to players out there who are playing Activision Blizzard games on Sony’s platform: It’s not our intent to pull communities away from that platform, and we remained committed to that.”
That’s a very vague statement and can be interpreted in many different ways. If you look at it one way, Spencer isn’t outright saying that Call of Duty will be an Xbox exclusive, for the time being, leaving the window wide open for that to happen. Call of Duty: Vanguard, despite flopping with both critics and gamers, was the top-selling game of December 2021, so we understand Microsoft backing up the Brink’s truck to own that franchise, taking sole ownership of it. So with the Call of Duty 2022 reportedly coming sooner rather than later, we can still expect that game to land on PlayStation consoles, but the real question is when will Microsoft decide to take its ball and go home?
We shall see. We are curious to learn how this MEGA deal will affect the video game industry in the future. You can peep more reactions in the gallery below.
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Photo: NurPhoto / Getty
1. This was all of us.
2. Accurate.
3. Hmmmmmm