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They do still have to contend with the CMA in the UK, but I feel like that obstacle won't have much of an affect.

The main thing I want out of this deal is I'm hoping Bobby Kotick gets the boot (even if he's leaving with a massive golden parachute) and serious measures are put in place to ensure the dangers the devs faced from management within the companies don't happen again.

I'm glad this long drama is finally unfolding. It's the end of a chapter and the beginning of another.

I am really scared….cause Microsoft is becoming a gigantic megacorp, Microsoft might own literally everything in the far future eventually and that is scary to think about.

HOWEVER Blizzard will absolutely improve because of this and probably stop being so…rapey too so its a mixed bag

I really wonder what this will mean for the future of Toys for Bob and the Activision franchises they worked on.

…as a random thought, I got the feeling that somehow because of this merger, Crash and Spyro might get offers for an invite to a future Smash Bros. I can see people speculating on that matter soon enough.

I'm really curious on if Raven Software will finally be released from the Call of Duty mines and get to work on either their old IPs again (Phil Spencer wore a Hexen shirt during the recent Xbox Showcase and mentioned "it doesn't mean a new game is being made, but it does mean I would like one"), or get to make new ones again (like when they made Singularity just before Activision put them on full CoD duty). In particular with Activision, id Software, and Bethesda under the same roof maybe Wolfenstein 2009 will stop being stuck in its weird legal limbo (apparently the reason the game isn't being sold on places like Steam and it's not backwards compatible on modern Xbox systems is because of legal weirdness involving the game because Activision published it, but they released it while Zenimax was in the middle of buying id Software and all their IPs). I mean I hope so, for pete's sake a major character from that game got a larger role in the Machine Games Wolfenstein series.

It's a shame. Not only because I'd like to keep playing Crash and Spyro games on PS and I'm certainly not going to buy an Xbox or upgrade my PC just to play them, but because greedy monopolies are never a good thing for consumers. My biggest concern is that it might embolden Microsoft into continuing their buyout spree with other companies and start turning more and more games into MS exclusives.

Gee it's almost if the us is run by corporate parasites therefore they can do whatever they want

Since the deal is definitely going through it looks like Sony has indeed signed Microsoft's contract to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation consoles for at least 10 years

What I'm most curious about personally is when Microsoft will bring the Acti-Blizz lineup of games to GamePass. CoD's obviously the biggest one given nearly the entire franchise can be played on Xbox (the sixth gen console exclusive games, plus that one time CoD1 got a console port back in 2009, are the only ones missing from backwards compatibility), AND surprisingly the servers for the old Xbox 360 games recently got a pretty major fix that finally fixed issues with hackers, which actually lead to a lot of people playing the 360 versions of games like Black Ops and Modern Warfare 3 recently, making the lobbies closer to what they were like when the games first launched. Diablo 4 isn't on GamePass right now, but given Microsoft did a lot of marketing for the game (including a console bundle) I'm sure it'll be one of the first games they put on the service.

Semi-related news, but Acti-Blizz's catalogue is making its way to Steam next month, starting with Overwatch 2. Considering this is coming at the heels of Microsoft's acquisition, I assume the deal had a heavy hand in this decision.

It's fucking bizzaro seeing Overwatch 2 on the Steam Store