Microsoft’s Activision acquisition should be allowed to pass

Microsoft doesn’t care about consoles, they care about games

Microsoft has made its position extremely clear over the last few years. Consoles don’t sell, the games they have do. And what’s more important than games? Having a subscription that opens access to a ton of them for a price that doesn’t make you cringe. Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision/Blizzard in this sense is no different than Disney’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox to bolster its own Disney+ offerings. In that regard, this acquisition should go through.

A big stigma surrounding Microsoft right now is its inability to produce games at the rate at which Sony releases them and with the same quality. Sony has experience in this, and the talent to back it up, Microsoft is attempting to build that pipeline of talent that will allow the company to build around.

And I get it, I really do. Microsoft isn’t putting in the work, instead, the company is attempting to buy its way to the top. The purchase of ZeniMax was a clear sign that Microsoft was planning to expand its control of the single-player game market by owning the IPs of Elder Scrolls, Doom, Prey, and more. Microsoft didn’t build that, it bought it.

But such is the way of competition in a growing market that has yet to reach its market potential. Over the last 40 years, the video game industry has gone from being for kids only, to being only a thing for nerds, to being respected as a budding art form, to now being the most influential and profitable form of entertainment in the entire world. That’s quite a journey, and along that journey, there have been millions of studios and small players that have built the industry to where it is today. In the end, as the money gets better, those with bigger budgets and massive visions will win out.

I’m not saying this as a “get over it”, but merely a conversation on the topic of market consolidation.