CEO of Microsoft Gaming Phil Spencer has revealed that one of the software giant’s primary reasons for acquiring Activision Blizzard King is for the company to get into mobile gaming.
Speaking during an interview on the Microsoft TechTalk show, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer stated that the company’s main attraction for acquiring Activision Blizzard King is its mobile division.
According to Phil, Microsoft is aware that the company’s DNA is not in mobile, and it does not have a successful mobile platform today. As a company, the software giant comes from PC, and in the gaming space, it comes from PC and console. Yet, most of the players across the globe today play on their phones.
Phil said that when Microsoft looked at ABK, a vast majority of the people who play games from Activision Blizzard King are playing mobile versions of their games. This includes games King games like Candy Crush that many play on their phones. In addition, Phil pointed out that Acitivision Blizzard King has done a good job in building mobile versions of some of their classic core games. He highlighted mobile Call of Duty as crossing $1 Billion dollars in lifetime revenue. He also mentioned that Blizzard recently launched a mobile version of Diablo, which is one of their main franchises.
The second appeal for acquiring Activision Blizzard King was the publisher’s deep history in PC. According to Phil, Blizzard’s history with World of Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo, as really fundamental PC franchises can help build a strong portfolio, as the company looks at strengthening Xbox and Game Pass.
Previously, Meta/Facebook defended Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard King in its statement. Mark Zuckerberg’s company stated that the barriers to market entry are generally low in any scenario. App shop models on all platforms have led to an increase in the number of newly published digital games, as developers no longer need to organize their distribution. There are also a wide variety of APIs, SDKs and other resources offered free of charge to developers by companies such as Meta, Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon, etc., that make it easier to create new games and features.
