Microsoft gaming has acquired Activision Blizzard, the studio behind the hit game franchise Call of Duty for $68.7 billion. Activision themselves had acquired King, the studio behind the hit mobile game Candy Crush a few years back. Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision and the recent Take-Two acquisition of Zynga will benefit mobile gaming in general. Big studios making these acquisitions shows how big mobile gaming has grown over the decade. Microsoft focuses to bring their PC titles through their cloud gaming and Take Two’s studio Groove Street brings the GTA Trilogy to mobile shows that their a huge market to conquer.
With this agreement, Microsoft will become the third-largest gaming company in terms of revenue, after only Tencent and Sony. With titles like Call of Duty and Overwatch, Microsoft gaming gains a competitive advantage against Sony.
Now that Microsoft Gaming owns King, they may be able to establish a footprint in mobile gaming. Sony, like Microsoft, does not have any popular mobile games, but this agreement allows Microsoft to adapt select PC titles to mobile using King studio’s experience. Microsoft and Activision will operate separately until the acquisition is completed.
The current position of Microsoft in mobile gaming
For Microsoft, their foray into mobile has not gone too well with only Minecraft being a success for them. Currently, they have other games that are doing decent like Mahjong and Wordament which are simple casual games while others have failed to succeed. With Activision and King’s experience, Microsoft will look to build its presence.
Activision themselves have acquired King, the studio behind the hit mobile Candy Crush were one of the pioneers when it comes to microtransactions. Activision has found success with its mobile port of Call of Duty. With Activision’s experience and increased employee strength, gamers can expect popular PC titles such as Forza Horizon, Flight Simulator, Halo to be ported to mobile in the future. Call of Duty Mobile has proved that today mobile can also bring console-level graphics. It would be great to make a simple version of a flight simulator on mobile.
Microsoft’s contribution to the future of Mobile Gaming
Microsoft’s acquisition bodes well for the future of mobile gaming as Microsoft, like other gaming studios, has identified the mobile gaming market to be one of the most important areas to focus on. In addition to expanding their mobile gaming portfolio by bringing mobile-native games, Microsoft is also focused on bringing Xbox games to mobile through their cloud streaming service, xCloud. With world-renowned franchises like Call of Duty, Diablo, and Warcraft and the support of Activision the expansion of the library of games available is bound to increase.
This deal also gives Microsoft an edge over its rival Sony in Mobile gaming. Sony also doesn’t have any big titles on mobile. They do have some titles but they are mediocre compared to some of the mobile games nowadays. Games like Uncharted Fortune Hunter were released way back in 2016 and haven’t been updated in years. This is the state of most of the mobile games of Sony. With Activision’s expertise in mobile gaming, Microsoft will get a huge advantage over Sony in Mobile gaming in the future.
Gaming has been key to Microsoft since our earliest days as a company. Today, it’s the largest and fastest-growing form of entertainment, and as the digital and physical worlds come together, it will play a critical role in the development of metaverse platforms.
satya nadella, ceo, microsoft
Secondly, this move is also going to accelerate the plans to develop a metaverse platform and build on the ideas of DeFi and NFTs. P2E games like Axie Infinity have been gaining immense popularity as the option to buy in-game items as a collectible is becoming a point of interest which has driven the growth of in-app purchases and blockchain-based games.
Bobby Kotick in an interview emphasized the importance of machine learning, artificial intelligence, and cloud in the near future, and Microsoft with its immense research and development team would certainly help in bridging the gap.
How do you think Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision will benefit mobile gaming? Let us know in the comments below!
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Ha-ha, well, let’s see what happens next. We’ll already be putting Windows on our mobiles.