The real cost of buying Activision Blizzard was the soul of the Xbox

A reader isn’t surprised by the latest Xbox rumors and argues that the cost of buying Activision Blizzard has been greater than Microsoft realizes.

They say money can’t buy you love, and we’ve found that to be definitely true with Xbox. In the past few years, they’ve spent over $76 billion (billions!) to acquire Activision Blizzard, Bethesda, and various other developers, and their reward for that is… lower hardware sales than the Xbox One. In fact, they’re doing so badly that reports say they’ll just give up trying to push consoles in Europe and just focus on Game Pass and cloud gaming.

The counter to this is that their revenue has increased because Activision Blizzard games like Call Of Duty sell so well and now all that money is coming to Microsoft. That’s true, except… they had to spend $69 billion to buy them, so they have to make that much profit before they break even. And no matter how well Call Of Duty sells, it will take many sequels, and more than a decade, before they come close.

To be honest, I’m shocked that anyone higher up at Microsoft admitted this, since apparently Phil Spencer and co. they would have to explain things in detail, including their predictions of what they thought would happen. So why does everything that has happened since then seem like a knee-jerk reaction? They seem to change plans almost every week, with reports of infighting over multiformat in particular, which we know wasn’t actually meant to go the way it is.

When Xbox first bought Bethesda, everything was going to be exclusive, there was no talk of going multiformat at all. However, a few months after the acquisition of Activision Blizzard and suddenly everyone is in a blind panic, games are going multiformat and thousands of people are losing their jobs. Was it part of the plan? It clearly wasn’t, but even if you claim it is, why was it revealed in such a casual, amateurish way?

All of these sudden changes make it feel like Microsoft’s top executives weren’t paying attention when the sale first happened, and since then they’ve taken a proper look at the books and had the shock of their lives. That would explain all the sudden complaints about the lack of growth and the need to expand the audience. All at the exact same time as Xbox sales take a worldwide downturn.

Microsoft is now one of the largest video game companies in the world, but at what cost? No one is buying their consoles anymore, to the point where it seems they are happy to let the current generation fade away and be forgotten.

Their biggest money maker is Call Of Duty which was multiformat before and is multiformat now. So what has Microsoft gained from this? Especially without any meaningful console sales, the Xbox division has just become Activision Blizzard in all but name. Aside from cloud gaming, there’s almost nothing they’re doing now that Activision Blizzard couldn’t have done when they were independent.

I believe the rumors of an Xbox ‘civil war’ between those who wanted to see things remain exclusive and those who didn’t. I assume the latter don’t care about hardware sales either and are happy for Xbox to become just a service, even though Game Pass is failing as well.

Like many others, I’m nostalgic for the days of the Xbox 360, when Xbox seemed to have a unique identity. They were the new usurpers, outselling Nintendo on their first try and putting the PlayStation on its feet. Although nowadays they just seem to pinball from one bad title to another. Every year they put on a good summer showcase and then right after everything breaks down for another 12 months.

I don’t see anything from the old Xbox today. Instead, it seems like they would do something just to make an extra buck, and then immediately reverse their plans a moment later. All that money and they haven’t earned anything. Instead, they’ve lost their direction and identity, the spirit of Xbox has been extinguished, and all that’s left is the empty shell of Activision Blizzard.

From the reader Ratso

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