It's official: Microsoft's $69 billion acquisition of the video game giant Activision Blizzard is settled after the U.S. Federal Trade Commission dropped their lawsuit that sought to block the deal. According to Reuters, the FTC stated that continued opposition to the deal was not in the public interest, and FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson intends to divert the agency's resources toward other cases.
The Activision Blizzard purchase is the largest acquisition in the history of the video game industry. Microsoft's formidable video game portfolio already includes the Xbox console, along with subscription and cloud-based gaming services. With the addition of Activision Blizzard, Microsoft's game catalog will also include extremely valuable franchises like Call of Duty, Diablo, and World of Warcraft.
According to IGN.com, regulators and industry watchers were concerned that Activision Blizzard's popular titles would become Xbox exclusives, but Microsoft confirmed that it would not lock those franchises into long-term exclusivity periods. In order to quell objections from U.K. regulators, Microsoft sold Activision Blizzard's cloud gaming rights Ubisoft.
What does this mean for gamers? Now that Xbox is available on multiple platforms, maybe not very much. But then again, as one snarky Reddit user speculated, "Given that Microsoft has bought Activision, do you think we will finally get a new game from the Prototype series?"
