The Real Cost of Buying Activision Blizzard Was the Soul of Xbox

A reader isn’t surprised by the recent Xbox rumors, claiming the cost of acquiring Activision Blizzard is higher than even Microsoft realizes.

They say money can’t buy love and we’ve seen that to be especially true for Xbox. Over the last few years they’ve spent over $76 billion (billion!) buying up Activision Blizzard, Bethesda and various other developers and their reward for doing so is… hardware sales lower than the Xbox One. In fact, they’re doing so badly that there are reports they’re going to give up on pushing the consoles in Europe altogether and just focus on Game Pass and cloud gaming.

The counterargument is that their revenues have gone up because Activision Blizzard games like Call Of Duty are selling really well and now all that money is going to Microsoft. Which is true, except… they had to spend $69 billion to buy them, so they need to make that much profit before they break even. And no matter how well Call Of Duty sells, it’s going to take a lot of sequels, and over a decade, before they even come close.

Frankly, I’m shocked that anyone higher up at Microsoft agreed to this, as Phil Spencer and co. presumably had to explain everything in detail, including their predictions of what they thought would happen. So why is it that everything that has happened since then seems like a sudden knee-jerk reaction? They seem to change plans almost every week, with reports of internal infighting over multiformat in particular, which we know for sure wasn’t meant to happen this way.

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

All these sudden changes make it feel like Microsoft’s top executives weren’t really paying attention when the sales first happened and then they’ve been taking a good hard look at the books and got the fright of their lives. That would explain all the sudden complaints about lack of growth and need to expand the audience. All at the exact same time that Xbox sales are taking a nosedive worldwide.

Microsoft is now one of the biggest video game companies in the world, but at what cost? Nobody buys consoles anymore, to the point where it seems like they’re happy for the current generation to just fade away and be forgotten.

Their biggest moneymaker is Call Of Duty, which used to be multi-format and is now multi-format. So what has Microsoft gained from this? Certainly without any meaningful console sales, the Xbox division has simply become Activision Blizzard in all but name. Other than cloud gaming, they now do almost nothing that Activision Blizzard couldn’t have done when they were independent.

I believe the rumors of a “civil war” at Xbox, between those who wanted things to remain exclusive and those who didn’t. I assume the latter don’t care about hardware sales either and are happy to see Xbox become a service, even if Game Pass fails as well.

Like many, I am nostalgic for the days of the Xbox 360, when Xbox seemed to have a unique identity. They were the young usurper, outdoing Nintendo on their first attempt and leaving PlayStation on the back foot. These days, however, they seem to go from one bad headline to the next. Every year they put on a good summer show, only to have it all fall apart for another 12 months.

I don’t see anything of the old Xbox anymore today. Instead it feels like they would do anything to make a few extra bucks, and then a moment later they would reverse their plans. All that money and they gained nothing. Instead they lost their direction and their identity, the soul of Xbox has died and all that is left is the empty shell of Activision Blizzard.

By reader Ratso

Reader’s comments do not necessarily reflect the views of GameCentral or Metro.

You can submit your own 500-600 word reader feature at any time, which if used will be published in the next suitable weekend slot. Simply contact us at gamecentral@metro.co.uk or use our Submit Stuff page and you don’t need to send an email.

MORE: New Xbox Ad Tries to Dissuade You from Buying a Console

MORE: Xbox Game Pass Eliminates Day 1 Games, Raises Standard Tier Prices

MORE: Xbox Game Pass subscribers no longer need a console – just an Amazon Fire Stick

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.