The agreement is done. They’re just waiting for the deal to close. They wouldn’t make an announcement like they did unless it was a pretty sure thing.
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Well, Disney acquiring Fox took 18 months and a lot of back and forth.
Unless its a game that has a “forza” in the name… Next Diablo 4 should be renamed to “Diablo Forza”. Then it will be good.
Jokes aside, the new Halo is pretty good, I quite enjoy the campaign on my PC with gamepass.
MS takes gaming very serious. So I kinda expect good things from this.
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Damn, that is huge news.
My reluctance to buy back into ATVI until the the whole harassment scandal was settled came back to hit me in the face 
At least the stock is still below what I sold at, even with these news. Which really speaks to how crazy bad the last 6 months have been for Activision. MS is buying them on the cheap.
Ugh. That was the one chance to get rid of him. You had one job MS!
And Diablo in there as well.
Yet 
Anyone who wanted to play Diablo on a Playstation or Switch might also have to readjust their expectations.
The one positive very thing about MS is that they are still sticking to their plan of all games being available on both Xbox and PC.
The worst thing that can happen is that they required you to use their horrible Xbox app on PC. It is really, really bad. Makes the Battlenet devs look like geniues.
Maybe MS should move everything to Battlenet instead 
But so far MS has been surprisingly good about releasing their games on Steam as well.
The companies themselves cant always decide if the deal is allowed to go through.
But yeah, this deal seems reasonably safe. If the Bethesda deal could go through, even with this one being much bigger (as in, freaking 10 times bigger), this likely will too. if MS bought Nintendo or Sonys game department, it might be a different case however.
Definitely not the worst company that could buy them.
Actually, the worst company that could buy other game companies, kinda was Activision themselves 
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I don’t think so, Minecraft, Doom and other microsoft owned games keep getting switch releases
MS has said future Bethesda games wont.
Hopefully they learn their lesson some day, and goes back to it, but in the short run it is probably too tempting to use these acquisitions to sell hardware and subscriptions over selling games.
Now I’ll just wait for Sony to buy Square Enix and make FF14 PS exclusive
If diablo becomes pay to play I’m out. I have zero pay to play games.
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Well. To be good, games need creativity, which thrives when developers have 1-2 guys that call the shots at most, without having to check with dozens of committees and bureaucratic structures. Large organizations are good for economies of scale, such as car manufacturing, but don’t do well with boutique lines or games. To do well, you need to take risks, which is the opposite of what a large scale business wants.
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I hope they blow the accumulated D2 dust out of D4 and make it a game for the 2020s instead of a reskin of a year 2000 game.
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You might not like him but some financial types think he is a genius by taking a company in bankruptcy (for 400,000) and turning it into a 80 billion dollar valuation company. He’s been at the head of Activation for 31 years - I truly doubt the board members have lost confidence in him now that he has swung this big deal. I noticed in the news had X-Box CEO Phil Spencer give his total confidence in Bobby.
Because I don’t know all the facts and the Wall Street Journal is not required to get fact checked I’m not sure what to believe in Bobby’s “guilt”. It’s trendy to try and de-throne powerful people, I don’t follow trends. I don’t trust the left or the right media either.
I realize this post is not going to be well liked, but so be it…
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I mean, things can’t get any worse, so I guess they can only go up from here?
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While you’re right, that doesn’t change the fact that B. Kotick is a sleaze of the lowest order.
Lol at the guys believing Kotick will remain.
Until this transaction closes, Activision Blizzard and Microsoft Gaming will continue to operate independently. Once the deal is complete, the Activision Blizzard business will report to me as CEO, Microsoft Gaming.
Aka, Bobby will remain CEO until the transaction closes. After that he will 100% leave. He’s not the guy to remain “in the shadows” with little power.
Anyway, this is big and good News. Whoever sees it otherwise are the ones in favor of Kotick as I don’t have other explications because Microsoft IS a very good company and has proved it in many ways.
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Once a “genuis” does not mean always a genius.
Even the best can become a drag on a company if they stick around too long.
He has clearly made himself part of the problem at ATVI, in multiple ways. If they wanted to stop the brain drain, getting rid of him had been a good start.
Yeah, that definitely is a possible way to read it. I hope that is how it goes.
It needs to be before 2023… too many better MS games are coming out in 2023 with higher requirements.
Sounds like WSJ is now quoting sources that Kotick will indeed leave.
This thing just moved a bit closer to Good News. Until MS announces that all future games are cancelled, and they are going to build some metaverse joke instead.
Will it be on the XBOX ?
It was obvious for him to go and whoever though otherwise, where just the usual “doom and gloom” guys who are everywhere when Big News arrives.