Kotick described a massive potential business pivot for ABK: hiring 'thousands' in sectors like artificial intelligence, data analytics, and 'purpose-built cloud' capacities. This might be the first time he has done so in a public forum during calls with investors, he has been more inclined to trumpet ABK's quarterly growth. He never mentioned Xbox Game Pass, but he did describe ABK's growth potential challenges.

In a Tuesday interview with GamesBeat, ABK CEO Bobby Kotick echoed this sentiment. Right now, we're the only platform shipping games on console, PC, and cloud simultaneously. As the Xbox ecosystem grows in both content and total size, it becomes more available to both players and our partners. Our total addressable market is going to grow, while others are relatively static. Across the Xbox ecosystem, we're now reaching hundreds of millions of people every month. We simply put more top-quality games in front of more people than other companies. Newly appointed Xbox CEO Phil Spencer has alluded to this market reality when discussing previous Xbox studio acquisitions, particularly Bethesda's diverse gaming portfolio. In that business model, subscriber numbers are what matter, not breakout first-party games or console sales. But Microsoft has been bullish about its Xbox brand growing not because of console sales and gifts under Christmas trees but because of the bigger profits possible when fans subscribe to Xbox services and spend money on the Xbox brand every month, primarily via Xbox Game Pass. The best sellers in the console industry continue to be holiday-adjacent releases, and Activision has a long track record of topping holiday sales charts. The deal is valued at $68.7 billion-or roughly 17 acquisitions of the Star Wars franchise-and that kind of money isn't spent without an expectation of major moves (and revenue) going forward.Īfter my colleague Kyle Orland chronicled everything we know thus far about the deal, I wanted to take a deeper look at the shape these combined companies (and their expected game launches) may take going forward. You might have heard the news: Microsoft has announced plans to acquire gaming behemoth Activision Blizzard King (ABK) and its subsidiary development studios.

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