Talking Point: It's Been Three Years Since Xbox Announced The Activision Blizzard Deal

I totally agree. Diablo 4 and BO6 are a blast but I am still waiting for more old COD games.

Microsoft only acquired Activision Blizzard King (ABK) on October 13, 2023. They've had just one year to set up their strategy. People often don't understand the complexities of obtaining licenses, publishing rights, and the hurdles involved before a product reaches consumers. Gamers tend to seek instant gratification, driven by their need for quick rewards.

Expecting all ABK games to be rolled into Game Pass in one fell swoop was never realistic. Managing intellectual property (IP) rights is a massive undertaking, especially for a company like ABK, which has pre-existing agreements and partnerships that can't be undone overnight. For example, Call of Duty has long-standing deals with platforms like PlayStation, which Microsoft had to honor as part of the acquisition process.

Additionally, Microsoft's acquisition of ABK wasn't just about games; it involved absorbing massive organizational structures across Activision, Blizzard, and King, each with its own leadership, teams, and goals. Integrating these entities into Microsoft's ecosystem, aligning workflows, and developing cohesive long-term plans is no small feat.

Game development itself is another factor—AAA games can take 3–5 years to develop, meaning any strategic changes initiated post-acquisition will take time to bear fruit. The focus on King's mobile gaming expertise (Candy Crush) also reflects Microsoft's larger vision for growth, which isn't just about console games but about expanding into new markets.

Finally, the regulatory challenges Microsoft faced during the acquisition process (from the FTC, CMA, and EU regulators) added further constraints. For instance, to address competition concerns, Microsoft committed to keeping Call of Duty on multiple platforms for at least 10 years, limiting its ability to make sweeping, immediate changes to the franchise.

In short, the expectations for instant results are disconnected from the realities of such a large-scale acquisition. It will take years to see the full impact of this deal on the gaming industry, but it's clear that the process involves much more than flipping a switch.

And its absolutely killed everything good xbox offered 3 years ago..

1:1 Gamepass to xbox live combination.

Game pass rewards that gave money off AAA games

A reward system that benefited players, Not the crap we have now.

Microsoft giving away their prized exclusives to playstation to claw money back yet PS wont give us nothing and they are ok with that.

A game pass price point thats going to increase to £20 a month very soon.

Its enforced closers of so many good development teams for no reason at all.

Thousands lost their jobs and for what? A terrible cod 6.

They promised a huge catalogue of activison games on the game pass.. We have had literally nothing to what they promised..

Id rather they never did this deal and Xbox was on the same track as it was 3 years ago

Don't care about the ABK back catalogue in the slightest. It will be used to patch content gaps in the game pass release schedule I expect.

What no one seems to be talking about are future projects from these folks and we have virtually no info on actual new stuff (& no old games with a new coat of paint don't count imo.)

I am more interested in seeing new ip's or at the very least new entries to existing franchises (beyond the expected cods) & we have nothing which i find disappointing.

This deal has been pretty much nothing but bad news for fans of anything but call of duty.

The games have trickled out, there are no new releases that validate the decision to buy an Xbox and Gamepass has locked people out of day 1 releases if they don't want to pay the highest tier.

I'm sure MS are very happy with the revenue from Activision going into the balance sheet though.

Obviously, the intention to acquire announcement came out 3 years ago, but negotiations to get to that point would have probably started well before that. The purchase of ABK was probably the last throw of the dice that Nadella agreed to when deciding whether or not to continue with the Xbox project. However, I think the vision of Spencer and Nadella (and the Microsoft bean-counters) as to how things at Xbox would proceed post acquisition were very different. I think Spencer thought things would continue as before, but with a vast amount of games to call upon to bolster Game Pass, whereas Nadella saw a way to make money off of the back of the acquisition by selling on the PlayStation, even if that was detrimental to Xbox console side of the business.

When the deal was first announced, I thought the future for Xbox as console business would be very bright, and exceptionally different from the way I see things now. Will Microsoft Gaming make money? Yes, and lots of it too. Will the Xbox console thrive? No, and far from it.

The ABK acquisition has not moved the dial for Xbox, mostly because those that game on a PlayStation still see no reason to own an Xbox because nothing has changed for them when it comes to Activision / Blizzard whereby they will still be getting all the games they were before. Thus, not only was there no influx of people leaving PlayStation to join Xbox, but the need to remain with Xbox were lessened mostly because of the uncertainty that the direction that Xbox is taking is so unclear.

Will there be another console? How safe is my library? Is it worth adding further games to my Xbox library? What will happen with Game Pass? Will GP prices increase still further? Is the number of subscribers to GP growing, static or falling? And what does that mean for GP? Will every new game be ported to the PlayStation? Will those games be ported day one? These and many more questions swirl around, and because Microsoft and Xbox are not answering any of them, and the waters are getting muddier and muddier, the biggest question of the lot is am I right to remain with Xbox? At least with Sony the future looks a lot more certain, and likely to continue as it currently is, and that certainty brings with it an amount of security.

So, was the ABK acquisition a good thing for me personally? No, I don't think it was...

This marked the beginning of the downfall of Xbox for me personally. The court battle drama sucked most of the fun out of Xbox discussions throughout 2022/2023. It was exhausting. Then just as the dust was settling and I was hoping for a return to the fun days of 2021 we then witness the Great Pivot of 2024, when Microsoft decided to begin the transition into a becoming third party publisher half way through the generation. Xbox consoles suddenly reduced to a niche afterthought rather than a core focus of the brand. I blame the Activision Blizzard purchase for that. I haven’t really seen any big benefits for me personally from the acquisition, as someone who’s quite disinterested in COD. All the exciting news has been coming from Bethesda instead. I was never enthused at the prospect of the acquisition and now I’m even more jaded and bitter about the whole thing.

Happy 3-year anniversary of @Ricky-Spanish's crusade to get the ABK back-catalogue on Game Pass 🎊🎈🎂

For me, when Xbox bought Bethesda it seemed like a hugely competitive move. I was very interested in what they were doing. Then this happened, it felt like overkill, and I still don’t get what the point was

This pathetic deal was the final straw in me abandoning Xbox and investing in PC gaming.

@Markatron84 I will continue to fight the good fight!
WHAT DO WE WANT!!
ALL ACTIVISION GAMES ON GAMEPASS!!
WHEN DO WE WANT THEM!!
NOW!!!!

All the older COD games should be on Game Pass. Not sure what the issue is with Microsoft.

@Romans12 They'll come in good time but they'll be staggered. If they released all games into GP, people would undoubtedly jump off Warzone and Blops 6 to play - which hurts MTX. My guess? They'll be released little and often during the sweet spot (August). That gives time for people to blast them before the new CoD release.

Course, we could get campaign-only releases if they sunset legacy servers. It's anyone's guess. I think the next thing to hit GP from ABK should be Crash 4 to complete the collection - and then legacy Spyro games that still aren't BC.

Wouldn't hurt to see a few remastered collections too. Low budget and big pay offs imo. There's plenty of Crash and Spyro that are decades old that haven't seen modern ports. That's not to mention Skylanders. They could re-release them with all toys digitally unlocked.

What happened with this deal was simple. Sony realised that XBOX was coming off life support, so trotted out some very biased and very polarizing wall charts and consumer surveys to make it look like Microsoft was about to corner the entire console market, forcing some deep concessions.

As has been said, Microsoft are giving up some of their big exclusives to Sony, and laying off even vaguely profitable divisions, for what?
Sony is a classic case of 'take and no give'. We're still waiting on Final Fantasy 7 Remake, despite the second game being out, and Final Fantasy 16 is 'rumored' to be coming to XBOX every few months.
There's still a slew of games that release on Playstation but not XBOX. Microsoft, with the MvC Collection, showed they're willing to fix unintended exclusivity, but very few companies seem to be willing to listen.

Very few people remember that, in all those FTC and CMA hearings, Sony was stood beside the regulators, while ABK was stood beside Microsoft. It's not Microsoft's higher ups who made the ABK deal into one of the biggest white elephants in consumer history...
It was Sony trying to make sure that, even if Microsoft claimed the prize, it would be them who'd make the most of it.

Probably going to take as long as it's taking Hinterland to finish The Long Dark's story mode to get the backlog.

If i would have known what they were planning to do, i would never have supported it.