Microsoft Buys Activision Blizzard for $68.7 Billion
Microsoft is headed for the metaverse. On Tuesday the multinational tech company agreed to buy Activision Blizzard, the legendary video game studio behind Call of Duty, Overwatch, Candy Crush, and more for $68.7 billion in cash.
The deal comes as numerous tech and media companies — most notably Meta — race to become frontrunners of the metaverse, the fabled next iteration of the internet. When the transaction closes, Microsoft will become the world’s third-largest gaming company by revenue.
While web3 and the metaverse have both become hot topics in the last year, they still remain concepts yet to be fully actualized through contemporary technology. With this latest acquisition — the largest in Microsoft history — the tech giant seems to be betting on the future of gaming, and itself becoming a major role in the next evolution of the VR and AR gaming experience.
“Gaming is the most dynamic and exciting category in entertainment across all platforms today and will play a key role in the development of metaverse platforms,” said CEO of Microsoft Satya Nadella in a statement. “We’re investing deeply in world-class content, community and the cloud to usher in a new era of gaming that puts players and creators first and makes gaming safe, inclusive and accessible to all.”
In gaining Activision’s nearly 400 million monthly users, only time will tell how Microsoft plans to expand into the metaverse. Yet, with the convergence of Activision’s industry-leading game technology and Microsoft’s groundbreaking artificial intelligence, we may very well see the lines between science fiction and reality continue to be blurred as this new gaming monolith develops.
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Photos courtesy of Microsoft.