Xbox boss reveals Call of Duty wasn\u2019t main reason behind Activision deal Activision BlizzardHead of Xbox Phil Spencer claims Call of Duty did not count as the main motivating factor behind Microsoft\u2019s Activision deal. Microsoft announced its intention of buying out Activision Blizzard earlier this year in January, a deal that totals nearly $70 billion. Despite regulators such as America\u2019s Federal Trade Commission and the UK\u2019s Competition and Markets Authority investigating the agreement, Microsoft believes the acquisition will be finalized by the end of the 2023 fiscal year. Such a historic purchase raises myriad questions, of course. Chief among them is why Microsoft would take the leap, especially amid ongoing troubles related to abuse allegations leveled against Activision Blizzard. What\u2019s the main reason for Xbox\u2019s Activision purchasing deal? In an interview with Bloomberg, Xbox head Phil Spencer revealed some of the thinking behind the Activision takeover. Notably, the publisher\u2019s flagship Call of Duty franchise did not receive mention. Spencer instead said mobile and PC gaming sat at the forefront of Microsoft\u2019s decision to pursue Activision Blizzard. The Microsoft Gaming CEO noted the following, in part: \u201cThe biggest gaming platform on the planet is mobile phones. One and a half billion people play on mobile phones. And I guess, regretfully as Microsoft, it\u2019s not a place where we have a native platform. As gaming, coming from console and PC, we don\u2019t have a lot of creative capability that has built hit mobile games. \u201c\u2026we really started the discussions \u2013 internally at least \u2013 on Activision Blizzard around the capability they had on mobile, and then PC with Blizzard. Those are the two things that were really driving our interest.\u201d Talk of the Xbox and Activision deal begins around the 6:50 mark in the video below: It\u2019s possible Spencer and Co. want to minimize the significance of Call of Duty to the acquisition, given concerns about how the brand\u2019s first-party ownership could impact competition. In response to questions from Brazil\u2019s regulatory body, as relayed by ResetEra\u2019s Idas, Sony called Xbox\u2019s attempt to acquire Activision anti-competitive. Sony, reportedly, supported its argument by noting that COD\u2019s popularity influences the console-buying habits of consumers. Still, Microsoft\u2019s interest in mobile gaming, in particular, is nothing to scoff at. A report from the start of the year claimed users spent more than $116 billion on mobile games alone in 2021.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Xbox boss reveals Call of Duty wasn\u2019t main reason behind Activision deal Activision BlizzardHead of Xbox Phil Spencer claims Call of Duty did not count as the main motivating factor behind Microsoft\u2019s Activision deal. Microsoft announced its intention of buying out Activision Blizzard earlier this year in January, a deal that totals nearly $70 billion. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35016"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35016\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}