Microsoft has now asked for an extension of their contract with Activision.
As reported by Reuters, the company and Activision are currently in negotiations to extend their deadline to close the deal past today, July 18, 2023.
While Microsoft won a resounding victory when they won the FTC lawsuit seeking an injunction to block the deal, the deal hasn’t actually been completed yet, and this may be a point of contention between the two companies.
If Microsoft doesn’t get the deadline extended, it is not necessarily the end of the deal. However, it would open up the chances that either Microsoft or Activision could walk away from the deal.
That may not be the outcome that either Microsoft’s or Activision’s leadership wants. However, even those bosses are accountable to both companies’ board of directors, and also to their stockholders, to varying degrees.
Microsoft and Activision have every reason to finish the deal. Both companies have big plans on the line with this deal. While Microsoft has made public their intention to use Activision’s games to get an edge in on mobile gaming, Activision will have the solid backing of one of the biggest tech companies in the world to fund and support their games.
It may not be easy for gamers to understand how this makes a difference for Activision. After all, they themselves are already one of the giants in the gaming business, as a conglomerate of Activision, Blizzard, and King.
It’s not so much that Activision needed more money to make games, but they now actually have the opportunity to take more risks. As an independent company, they had to justify each project to shareholders, by demonstrating elaborate plans to make astronomical amounts of money. At least, that was how Bobby Kotick, Activision’s long time CEO, has run his company for decades.
Under Microsoft, the rules can and probably will change. Bobby has agreed to leave if the deal pushes through, and the many studios previously under him can go forward making games as they did before, or they can try new things. As we now know, Microsoft lets their acquired studios do carte blanche, even to a fault.
But then, Bobby himself might be the reason this extension has become so suddenly quiet. Neither Microsoft or Activision have spoken publicly about their negotiation for this extension. It certainly looks like Activision could be looking for something extra from Microsoft to sway them to sign.
Whatever the situation is, we may find out in a matter of hours.
