Microsoft made several headlines when they unveiled their interest in bringing on another acquisition. After Zenimax Media, Microsoft went after a massive name with Activision Blizzard. The purchase brought in over $68 billion, and it was an uphill battle for Microsoft. They had to go through a series of regulators to ensure that this deal wouldn’t hurt competition. Of course, the significant component that hit the headlines was the fact that Microsoft would own Call of Duty. That made many players worried about a scenario in which Call of Duty would no longer be available on the PlayStation line of consoles. The folks over at Xbox continued to ensure this wouldn’t be the case.
A series of contract agreements were written to guarantee regulators and players worldwide that Call of Duty would land on competitor platforms. Instead, the big component of this purchase wasn’t Call of Duty but mobile gaming. Thanks to the VGC, we are finding out that Phil Spencer, the head of Xbox, recently was on the Xbox podcast, in which Phil continued to reiterate that the purchase mainly had to do with Microsoft’s pursuit to land on mobile gaming. If you look at gaming as a whole, a vast amount of potential players are playing on their smartphones. It’s a market that Microsoft wasn’t going to ignore, and Phil notes that if you want to be relevant in gaming at a global scale, then you’re going to need some relevancy for the largest platform, which is mobile.
Activision Blizzard also owns King, a massive name for the mobile industry, and it’s through this acquisition that Microsoft will be able to learn how to best get into a mobile market. After all, it’s a massive market full of opportunity, but we don’t know just what the future holds beyond that. Microsoft owns a vast collection of IPs, which could potentially mean some interesting mobile game spinoffs or adaptations. Even some games could land in the mobile marketplace as a port.
Phil Spencer noted that they don’t want to turn all their franchises into mobile ones. So you won’t see everything Microsoft has in their control land on your mobile smartphones. Since this deal just closed, it will probably be a good little while before we see just what mobile ventures Microsoft’s Xbox team takes on. For instance, even established released games are not landing on Xbox Game Pass right away. Earlier today, we reported that there are no immediate plans for titles like Call of Duty to land on Xbox Game Pass anytime soon. Instead, we’ll likely see those games come sometime in 2024 and perhaps even learn of what mobile titles could be coming out first from Microsoft’s line of first-party franchises.
