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Indeed this is a pretty huge surprise, and I feel like I'm noticing a trend with Microsoft as of late. Remember how before they bought Bethesda, Bethesda was in hot water over stuff like paid mods and Fallout 76? And Activision-Blizzard is in an even worse spot because they outright mistreated employees, and pretty much everyone is calling for Bobby Kotick to finally leave. It almost feels like Microsoft wants to buy out certain infamous companies maybe in hopes of changing them for the better. Starfield is going to be the game that'll show if Bethesda has changed for the better, but for Activision-Blizzard it's possible that the change in leadership is exactly what they need to finally shed the slimy skin of Bobby Kotick and his reign.

From a purely consumer stand point this likely also means IPs like Call of Duty, Warcraft, and others are going to no longer come to PlayStation at some point, being exclusive to Xbox, PC, and maybe getting Nintendo console ports every so often.

I find it a bit scary that the big boys are buying eachother up.
If this trend continues, we'll end up with only a handfull of big players at the top.

@MissFortune

I wouldn't think so beneficial about a billion dollar company.
It fits with the course Xbox is going right now, they want to get some strong IP's of their own cause they lacked that for a long time.
The fact that Bethesda and Blizzard were bought is not to give them a redemption arc, it's the IP's they're after. Both were in a bad spot for a while so it was the perfect opportunity to take over.

> It almost feels like Microsoft wants to buy out certain infamous companies maybe in hopes of changing them for the better

No, they want to buy companies at a discount due to scandals tanking their stock price, so they can bolster their Xcloud subscription service, which Microsoft is going all in on.

It might also result in said companies being made to clean up their mess, but if it does, that's a side effect.

Wouldn't the fact that they're being bought out mean it's too late for that "kick in the pants"?

Bethesda's active games services haven't improved since the Microsoft buyout so I'm not convinced Activision-Blizzard's will either. The only priority for Microsoft is getting ahold of studios and getting them onto Gamepass before Sony or Tencent.

There's also a shadow race for the company who can make the best metaverse market fastest and first. I foresee that companies like Microsoft speculate the future of gaming is making a seamless space where you can adventure in Tamriel, earn an NFT dragonborn helmet in that, wear it to a metaverse event showing of the latest Halo esports match, and then trade it for some gold to buy a new mount in WoW. Xbox Games Pass is the perfect staging ground for this, they can afford to sell the games at a pittance when the NFT microtransactions are where the real money is at.

I find this news more concerning than relieving as others have pointed out, the industry is becoming more concentrated at the hands of a few giant tech companies.

On the possible upside, if all these IP's become purely exclusive to Xbox/Windows, I'm curious what Sony's response will be, particularly for online games. Will they bring back long dormant franchises to stay competitive in the online fps sphere? we could see the long awaited return of Killzone and Resistance and Socom.

Generally ambivalent to this piece of news.

It's a bad sign when there are less companies, but video games is already an oligopoly. Plus, Activision – Blizzard haven't been run too well recently. They were either going to fall apart, stagnate or get bought out.

This is still capitalism we are talking about I doubt we will see an improvement really

Edit: not arguing for communism obviously I am just saying

How is this good news? video games will become even more formulaic/bland than before

Because what we need is more exclusivity for IPs that people actually like. No doubt they'll also make use of the shitty DRM-client ActiBlizzard owns instead of Steam for future Microsoft releases to save on distribution cash.