Oh lawd. Has everyone had the chance to catch up with all this yet, or are we all still sat in stunned disbelief? In case you missed it (and I wouldn’t blame you for doing so, since it’s basically all kicked off in the last couple of hours), Xbox have decided on this fine Tuesday to straight up buy Activision. All of it. What a time to be alive.
Of course, this colossal acquisition means that Microsoft are soon to be the owners of a massive amount of IPs. I mean, Crash and Spyro for goodness sake. Who’d have ever thought that the beloved PlayStation icons would find themselves a new home with Xbox?
Spyro the Dragon is just one of many IPs that Microsoft is set to own after the deal goes through...
Amongst the other IPs that will come Xbox's way as part of its Activision Blizzard acquisition are Call of Duty, Diablo, Overwatch, Candy Crush and World of Warcraft. Just some small franchises, nothing to get excited about.
VGC has compiled a list of many IPs that Xbox should soon have in their grasp, assuming the deal all goes through okay. It's a long one, featuring names both old and new - and we've added a few more, to hopefully make this list as complete as possible:
- Apache Air Assault
- Blood Drive
- Blackthorne
- Blur (our own HoC is desperate to see this one back)
- Cabela's series (it's a hunting brand, so, maybe?)
- Caesar
- Call of Duty
- Candy Crush
- Commander Keen (the last game in the series was Activision published)
- Crash Bandicoot
- Diablo
- DJ Hero
- Empire Earth
- Gabriel Knight
- Geometry Wars
- Guitar Hero (and Band Hero)
- Gun
- Hearthstone
- Heroes of the Storm
- Hexen
- Interstate ’76
- King’s Quest
- Laura Bow Mysteries
- Little Computer People
- The Lost Vikings
- Mixed Messages
- MTX Mototrax
- Overwatch
- Phantasmagoria
- Pitfall
- Police Quest
- Prototype
- Rock 'n' Roll Racing
- Quest for Glory
- River Raid
- Singularity
- Skylanders
- Solider of Fortune
- Space Quest
- Spyro the Dragon
- StarCraft
- Street Hoops
- Tenchu (the first three games only)
- TimeShift
- Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater
- True Crime
- Wizards and Warriors
- World of Warcraft
- Wreckless
- Zenji
- Zork
So yeah, there’s a lot to unpack here, and likely more we've not listed above (cheers again to VGC). The deal is going to cost Xbox a whopping $68.7 billion, which, just to put it into perspective, totally dwarfs Disney’s acquisition of Marvel and Star Wars, which cost $8 billion combined. It's an incomprehensible amount of money.
Assuming everything goes ahead as planned, Microsoft would, of course, have it in their power to make any number of those IPs Xbox exclusives, which is certainly a proposition to consider. There’s one thing for sure, though - Game Pass is about to get a whole lot bigger.
Featured Image Credit: Toys for Bob, Activision, Blizzard EntertainmentTopics: Xbox, Activision, Activision Blizzard, Microsoft