What Xbox will likely do with its $68B purchase of Activision Blizzard King

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson)

You might have heard the news: Microsoft has announced plans to acquire gaming behemoth Activision Blizzard King and its subsidiary development studios. The deal is valued at $68.7 billion—or roughly 17 acquisitions of the Star Wars series—and that kind of money doesn’t get spent without an expectation of major moves (and revenue) going forward.

After my colleague Kyle Orland chronicled everything we know thus far about the deal, I wanted to take a deeper look at the shape these combined companies (and their expected game launches) may take going forward.

Game Pass must be fed—and Kotick is eager to offer prey

The best sellers in the console industry continue to be holiday-adjacent releases, and Activision has a long track record of topping holiday sales charts. But Microsoft has been bullish about its Xbox brand growing not because of console sales and gifts under Christmas trees, but because of the bigger profits possible when fans subscribe and spend money on the Xbox brand every single month, primarily via Xbox Game Pass. Within that business model, subscriber numbers are what matter, not breakout first-party games or console sales.