Microsoft Just Bought Activision Blizzard for $68 Billion

hello there lovely p politics from nintendo live here and this is a a bit of an impromptu video i had plans to do something else with my afternoon and then microsoft came and bought out activision blizzard for 70 billion dollars sorry 68.7 billion dollars just to put that into perspective that's more than i think the entire like audience watching this video will ever earn in their life combined and in order to discuss what a well not just the amount of money but the entire situation and its ramifications on the entire gaming industry we've got john boy that's a lot of dough and we've also got kate hi that's me i am actually uh in possession of 70 billion so i don't know oh wow yeah with the audience is it zimbabwean dollars or uh no i think it's cuddly toys i didn't specify my currency sorry right so yeah this is um this sort of came out of nowhere um we're gonna you know sort of nip a few things in the bud one we're well aware that this is not actively directly affecting nintendo i mean it does indirectly which we'll get into but you know sort of we still feel that this is monumental enough we'd be remiss not to talk about it and also we are aware of the controversy surrounding activision blizzard as of last year which we will be covering as well but um yeah john initial thoughts this was necessary i feel it's it's such a tough thing to come down on because monopolizing the industry is bad but activision blizzard they are toxic from the roots everything has to be restructured the company needs to be rebuilt with new leadership and it's not one person you take one person away there's an entire board who've been backing them for years and years and years so to buy them feels like the only necessary way to change that so i'm conflicted on the monopolizing aspect but the aspect in which the company gets to be healthy and the employees get to be healthy i'm way more about that it's an interesting situation because microsoft also not that long ago announced that they were buying out um xenomax media which includes bethesda and that is also a big deal not maybe not not quite as big a deal as this because that was 8 billion and this is 68 billion but even so oh and the franchise franchises too like call of duty on its own is massive but then you've got candy crush which you know that's not a core franchise for xbox gamers but it's huge anyway yeah it's it's wild like to put this into perspective for people who aren't like super in on the games industry it's like if disney bought coca-cola like i don't know why they would do that but that's a really good analogy actually like obviously disney and coca-cola are friends because there's like coke-sponsored stuff in disney parks but if they bought them it would be like what does that mean that's so weird and it fills in a lot of gaps for xbox's ip library too because they are they now own crash and spyro i mean they didn't really have like a family-friendly platformer apart from banjo and banjo's been in limbo for a long time and they they now own crash and spyro i was gonna bring that up because i'm stupidly still adjusting to rare not being nintendo and it hasn't been for a very long time so now this is 22 years i'm like banjo-kazooie is a nintendo game it's not anymore hasn't been for a long time rare has no interest in doing a banjo it seems but toys for bob are now a microsoft studio they make you know they may crash for they could do a banjo now there's nothing stopping them yeah is is toys for bob one of the ones that got kind of like assimilated into the activision slime and just dispersed kind of yeah they are put in call of duty vicarious visions were put into blizzard um so they did the crash uh the trilogy remastered but toys for bob are still a they're still their own company so they can be put onto anything and now their xbox owns them yeah i think it's important to note as well that um although this immediately makes i think the initial reaction to this entire situation is oh my god that means no more activision blizzard games on nintendo platforms and that is a distinct possibility but at the same time we have already had quite a few microsoft games xbox games released on the switch i mean blooming this month at some point we've got the original banjo-kazooie coming to nso and i know that's not not like a new game but we've had uh ori you know the uh you know orion the blind forest and one of the wisps have have both come over um uh i was about to say overwatch but that's an exhibition blizzard minecraft's not stopped minecraft dungeons which was done way after the acquisition that came to switch yeah i was actually wondering like do you think minecraft's gonna get a bunch of acti blizz stuff like crash bandicoot in minecraft probably yeah yeah i mean it's it's easy money you know just hey here's some skins look now you can be crushed bandicoot that's his camera there's already like sonic minecraft stuff so i i imagine they're just going to reskin the sonic stuff and be like now it's crash it's orange sonic everyone's favorite there he is i think because there's obviously going to be huge ramifications i've got my headphones on and all i'm getting right now are notification sounds um there are going to be massive ramifications when it comes to the ips that belong to activision blizzard when coming to other platforms like the switch but also the ps4 now i do i mean this is always up for debate but i do believe that microsoft view the playstation and sony as a whole as a direct competitor and yet i don't think given the relationship they've had with nintendo i'm not entirely certain they view nintendo in the same light hence why we've had the microsoft games come over to the switch i mean there have also been some semi-microsoft um ips like cuphead and stuff like that they've come over but they also went to the ps4 and you know fine but it really is it makes me sort of question the entire future of exclusivity when it comes to microsoft ips i mean nintendo stuff it's going to remain nintendo that's you know that's not going to change but this is this is like this is history being made yeah yeah we've seen this with bethesda already like bethesda had some playstation time exclusives lined up before the buyout site death loop was made time exclusive to ps5 even though xbox owns them but starfield that's going to be exclusive to xbox and pc and some playstation fans thought they wouldn't do that um i don't know maybe without the kindness or something but of course they did of course starfield is going to be exclusive and basically every every bethesda game is probably going to be exclusive to xbox and pc from here on out and activision probably the same thing um yeah maybe switch would be an exception for some games i can see crash and spyro coming to switch but call of duty that's an xbox franchise now do you think that microsoft and xbox are just trying to like starve the playstation of oxygen just like buy up everything in the room and then sony's like what do we have oh god we've got god of war i mean that's how it feels to me you know sony um with the ps4 and the um the tail end of the ps3 with things like the last of us they had loads of exclusives and they were really pushing those and everyone loved them the ps4 absolutely dominated the xbox one overall in the previous generation but now we're looking at an entirely different set of rules it's as if xbox sort of felt that oh well we can't you know sort of win that way we'll just take everything that you rely on for sort of like the the base level stuff that everyone wants to buy and then the exclusives on top means that everyone's going to go for a ps4 over an xbox one and basically just yeah take those baseline games away so now the list of xbox exclusives is going to be eye watering yeah think about game pass too our call of duty dominates the charts every year that's gonna be day one on game pass now yeah i mean for me it i'm thinking about it i have game pass it doesn't really change anything because i'm not really into any of activision blizzard's games that i can think of off the top of my head i guess i'd play a new diablo maybe yeah i'm not like massive on the franchise on the franchises they have but i mean like crash and spyro those are those are always good times they're good romps yeah i'm i'm pretty into a few of their ips but as soon as all of the controversies came out i just stopped i didn't buy diablo 2 i didn't buy um the sony hawk on switch i just stopped but now they're under the leadership of phil i feel a lot better you feel a lot better i i feel a lot better yeah but there are still questions like what what is going to happen to activision's main board because we know bobby kotec is still on the board at the moment um the deal hasn't closed yet so there's a possibility when it does close phil would just say get out of it bobby but we don't know that um there's still unknowns in that respect yeah i mean they've sort of i guess hinted at like wanting to change the company culture uh in the big post they did where they were like we value not being ourselves to people and you know that's that's promising um but it is sort of like vague like platitudes at this point so you know i i imagine it's very hard with how quickly this deal seemed to happen like they gave insiders like 10 minutes lead time on the story which made it seem like it happened this morning um i i imagine that it's very difficult legally to just oust a guy who the entire board supports like that's gonna have to they're gonna have to dig him up by the roots somehow yeah and um there was a while ago phil was asked what his position is on on activation blizzard when all this like came to surface and he says he's re-evaluating their relationship and yeah he's planning to re-evaluate it was just a buy though yeah i mean technically yeah he was right i am genuinely worried that i'm going to do something to annoy phil spencer and he's going to bite me out would you be so bad though you'll be loaded for life alex true well i mean how much are we valuing alex at really well he'd be on game pass too so pretty good access to him yeah um that's about i mean we we could probably talk for and speculate for you know goodness knows how long on this but we've got other things to do today uh are there any closing thoughts anyone has my favorite thing is that uh well firstly wait what started trending just all caps wait what on twitter uh but secondly um one of my friends was like how can you can you imagine releasing a game today can you imagine doing that uh drink box uh the people who make guacamelee did actually release a game today and uh it's called nobody saves the world not coming to switch but uh i do feel a little bad for them yeah that's uh unfortunate timing should we say yeah how would you know you'd have to be phil spencer i guess my closing thought is like this is clearly not good for the industry it's clearly not good to have xbox owning all these brands but i think this just does more good than it does bad though for activision there's so many employees who for years have worked in this toxic environment and this is the time to change that and not only that but give their ip's new life because they're putting everyone into call of duty which was damaging not just the employees motivation but their output it's just call of duty so this is a chance to make active version so much better and even if it is exclusive to xbox i think that's i think that's better for everyone yeah i mean it's clearly it may well be the call of duty was the reasoning like the primary reasoning behind the buyout we'll we'll probably never know but you know the fact that call of duty is gonna be most likely an xbox exclusive is absolutely colossal i have heard them mentioning the metaverse as well so i can only imagine yeah they're gonna try and do a fortnight like thing i don't know if that'll be call of duty or overwatch or something new but we're gonna see like a fortnight like with i don't know xbox's entire staple of characters and nfts the future is bleak this is fun right well i think that about wraps it up um please do let us know your thoughts in the comments down below but for the time being just thank you so much for watching if you like this video then why don't you buy uh the entire of nintendo life for 6.68 billion dollars and be sure to check out nintendolife.com for all sorts of lovely nintendo related content thank you again for watching bye bye xbox owns secure now so they can have their own from software franchise if they desire [Music] you

Channel: Nintendo Life

Views: 67,032

Keywords: Nintendo Life, Nintendo, Nintendo Switch, Switch, NX, New 3DS, Nintendo UK, Alex, Jon, Kate, xbox, xbox on switch, microsoft switch games, pyro, crash, spyro switch, crash bandicoot switch

Id: VPzLAAAoArE

Length: 13min 55sec (835 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 18 2022