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The giant Microsoft, which notably manufactures the Xbox console, announced on Tuesday its intention to buy, for nearly 69 billion dollars, the American Activision-Blizzard, which notably publishes Call of Duty and Candy Crush.
The acquisition will take the form of the cash redemption of Activision shares at a unit price of 95 dollars per share. It is supposed to be concluded during the financial year 2023. If the transaction is confirmed, it will be the biggest operation in the video game sector, far ahead of the takeover of Zynga by Take-Two for 12.7 billion dollars. dollars announced last week. It is also the largest acquisition made by Microsoft, far ahead of LinkedIn in 2016 for $26.2 billion.
« Video games are the fastest growing and most exciting category in entertainment across all platforms and will be instrumental in the development of metaverse platforms “said in a press release the boss of the computer giant, Satya Nadella.
The cloud bet
Microsoft, which has been marketing the Xbox console for 20 years and has several development studios, will thus become the third largest player in the video game industry in terms of turnover behind Chinese Tencent and Japanese Sony, maker of the PlayStation. .
The group was already a heavyweight in this market, the most dynamic in the entertainment sector with 3 billion players worldwide, whether on console, computer or mobile. But it is especially in video games on the “cloud” (remote computing) that Microsoft has huge ambitions.
The company announced on Tuesday that its Xbox Game Pass monthly subscription service, billed as the “Netlix of video games” and providing access to a vast library of titles from its console, had passed the 25 million mark. users. The content is therefore extremely important, and with its catalog of worldwide successes such as Call of Duty, Wolrd of Warcraft Where Candy Crush, Activision-Blizzard becomes a key asset for Microsoft.
Ubisoft in sight?
The announcement of this takeover comes at a time when Activision is going through a turbulent period. The Californian group is accused by American authorities and employees of having allowed a sexist corporate culture to develop by not having sufficiently cracked down on cases of sexual assault and harassment.
The Redmond giant, in the suburbs of Seattle, is chaining studio takeovers, reminds our correspondent in Washington, Guillaume Naudin. Last year, it was Bethesda, publisher of the Fallout and Doom hits and it’s probably not over. The action of French Ubisoft soared on the stock market. Investors are clearly expecting him to become the next target. Because the sector is in full concentration. With this huge operation, Microsoft finally becomes only the third in the world in the sector, behind the Chinese Tencent and the Japanese Sony.
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