Microsoft acquires Activision Blizzard for $68.7 Billion: Talking Tech podcast

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Hey there, listeners. It's Brett Molina. Welcome back to talking tech huge news in the world of video games. And for that matter technology, Microsoft announced it plans to acquire video game publisher Activision Blizzard in an all cash deal valued at an eye-popping 68.7 billion. You are probably thinking to yourself, "Why is Microsoft spending 69 billion on a company that makes video games?" I will explain this shortly. You can read about everything that happened with this deal in a story that I wrote on tech.USAtoday.com.

Activision Blizzard is probably one of the biggest video and publishers out there. It is behind Call of Duty, which has been one of the top selling video games in the US for years now. It owns Blizzard Entertainment, which has made a ton of several popular online games, including Overwatch, Diablo, World of Warcraft Activision Blizzard also owns King, which is a mobile games publisher, which makes Candy Crush, which I'm sure a lot of you have played on your smartphones.

Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella said that the deal will help the company as it expands more into the metaverse. And they're also pushing a lot of other stuff too in terms of cloud gaming and also their Game Pass, which is their kind of Netflix style service. We'll talk about at that as well in a second.

A couple thoughts on this. Let's start here. If you're someone that is the owner of a PlayStation, this does not sound like the most exciting news Call of Duty has been one of the biggest games on video game consoles and it has been one of the biggest PlayStation games out there. With Microsoft now potentially if they close the deal owning the rights to Call of Duty and all Activision Blizzard titles, it is possible that you could see a franchise as big as Call of Duty go away from the PlayStation entirely, which is remarkable to think about. Again, this is one of the biggest games on PlayStation right now and it is in the hands of Microsoft.

Now, it's possible that we see some Call of Duty games hang around for a while and then eventually over time you get to a point where there's a new Call of Duty that comes out and it is available on Xbox and PC and that's it, but we'll see. They also, if you recall last year, Microsoft closed a deal to acquire ZeniMax Media, which owns Bethesda Game Studios. They make a ton of popular games like Fallout and the Elder Scrolls. And as you saw, they introduced Starfield, which is the next big game that's out of that studio that's been described a lot. It's like Elder scrolls or Fallout, but it's in space. That game is coming out in November. It's expected to come out in November, and that is exclusive to PC and Xbox right now.

So it is very conceivable to see Call of Duty in the next few years, be a game that comes out only for PC and only for Xbox. At that level, that's pretty remarkable. The next layer of this, of course, is the metaverse. We have heard so much talk about this. We have mentioned the metaverse countless times on this podcast. It's this virtual universe that mixes different elements like social media and augmented reality and virtual reality. And basically a lot of people believe this will take over what the modern internet is right now.

We've seen Microsoft dabble in this a bit before. They have Minecraft, which they bought I believe in 2014. They also have a ton of their own augmented reality and virtual reality tools. HoloLens is the first device that comes to mind. So they seem to be in a position where they can take advantage of metaverse. And obviously with Activision, they have all these different properties that have incredible audiences that are really attached. There is kind of an avenue there where you build these different universes and you have this own metaverse happening there.

The other part of the deal that I think is also very interesting and is a big reason, probably why Microsoft did this is the mobile element. King is a very popular mobile games publisher. As I mentioned, they worked on Candy Crush Saga. They also recently launched a game based on the Crash Bandicoot series, which was really popular back in the day and it's published by Activision. And Microsoft in terms of games, you haven't really seen a ton from Microsoft.

Obviously a lot of their software like Office and Teams and everything else they use, you see apps and everything there. On the gaming front though, you don't see a lot. And I think that's going to be another interesting angle to this is what do they do with all those Xbox properties on a mobile platform? Are we going to see more games based on say a Halo that ends up on mobile? What kind of stuff do we see out of that? That'll be really interesting to see where that all mixes in. The deal isn't expected to close until next year. We'll see how this all lines are up. Obviously, this is a really big story and we'll keep you updated on the latest on this. Just go to tech.USAtoday.com for the latest.

Listeners, let's hear from you. Do you have any comments, questions or show ideas, any tech problems you want us to try to address? You can find me on Twitter @brettmolina23. Please don't forget to subscribe and rate us or leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, anywhere you get your podcasts. You've been listening to Talking Tech. We'll be back tomorrow with another quick hit from the world of tech.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Microsoft acquires Activision Blizzard for $68.7 Billion: Talking Tech podcast