With the acquisition of Activision Blizzard, Microsoft aims to accelerate the growth of its gaming business across mobile, PC, console and cloud. In addition, Activision has the content necessary to generate engagement and revenue for Microsoft’s move into cloud gaming. Furthermore, the acquisition would strengthen Microsoft’s Game Pass portfolio as it plans to launch Activision Blizzard games into Game Pass, which has recently reached a new milestone of over 25 million subscribers. The acquisition includes iconic franchises from the Activision, Blizzard and King studios such as Warcraft, Call of Duty, Overwatch, Diablo, and Candy Crush, in addition to global eSports activities through Major League Gaming. With Activision’s existing library of games, Microsoft can expect an increase in its Xbox Game Pass game subscription and gain an edge over Sony’s PlayStation.
MARKETSANDMARKETS™ VIEWPOINT:
The acquisition would provide Microsoft with building blocks for creating metaverse platforms. The acquisition points out Microsoft’s focus on videos games in the digital world enabled by virtual and augmented reality. Thereby, Microsoft aims to target gaming customers in the virtual reality space in addition to the traditional phones, consoles, and personal computers. Cloud services, which provide high-speed access to software applications regardless of location, are among the pillars of the emerging Metaverse and its growing array of VR and AR devices. Microsoft can leverage its Azure cloud platform along with other virtual reality products to create highly accessible and immersive metaverse platforms around the acquired gaming content.
Furthermore, the platform needed to support the Metaverse will have to be constantly available and highly scalable. In such a demanding scenario, AIOps will play a relevant role in managing all the necessary infrastructure, including hardware, base software, and communications. Thereby, Microsoft’s expertise in artificial intelligence (AI) would enable the company to create self-adaptive, resilient, and efficient platforms. In addition, Microsoft’s AI capabilities would further help in incorporating additional features such as accurate avatar creation, automatic translations, image recognition, and self-learning non-playing characters, among others.
Metaverse platforms are expected to create large volumes of data around their users and the digital environments. Such data can be analyzed to gain deeper insights into customer experiences and preferences to build highly engaging and immersive platforms. Furthermore, the collection of such data requires highly reliable and efficient information security infrastructure to ensure data privacy and security. Microsoft can make use of its analytics and cybersecurity capabilities to build safe and protected metaverse platforms for its users. Thereby, the acquisition of Activision Blizzard not only helps Microsoft boost its gaming business segment but also in leveraging its existing technologies to become a forerunner in the metaverse space using the publisher’s highly popular content.