Phil Spencer: 'I Feel Good About the Progress' on the Activision Blizzard Deal - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 24 August 2022 / 2,693 Views
Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer in an interview with Bloomberg discussed Microsoft's proposed $68.7 billion deal to acquire Activision Blizzard.
"I feel good about the progress that we've been making," said Spencer. "But I go into the process supportive of people who maybe aren't as close to the gaming industry asking good, hard questions about 'what is our intent? What does this mean? If you play it out over five years, is this constricting a market? Is it growing a market?'"
He added, "I've never done a 70 billion-dollar deal, so I don't know what my confidence means. I will say the discussions we've been having seem positive."
Saudi Arabia's competition authority over the weekend became the first place to approve the Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard. The deal could also possibly be approved by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in the US by the end of this month. Brad Smith, the Microsoft President and Vice Chair, in May said the Activision Blizzard acquisition is "moving fast" for how big the deal is.
The Communications Workers of America, the largest communications and media labor union in the United States, sent a letter to the FTC in support of the proposed acquisition.
Activision Blizzard shareholders in April voted to approve Microsoft's acquisition of the gaming giant. More than 98 percent of the shares voted in favor of the acquisition at $95.00 per share.
If the deal is approved by all regulatory bodies the video game IPs that will be owned by Microsoft include Call of Duty, Warcraft, Candy Crush, Tony Hawk, Diablo, Overwatch, Spyro, Hearthstone, Guitar Hero, Crash Bandicoot, StarCraft, and more.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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The broader market has declined since the deal was announced, so this has gone from Microsoft getting a bargain, to Microsoft paying a fair price. If the broader market declines any more, Microsoft will be paying a premium over if they had announced the deal later on. But I don't think they even care about that, at this point. They likely had immediate gains from announcing the deal (console sales, Game Pass subscriptions, etc.), and will likely have earned more than $69 billion in profits from when the deal was announced to when it might close.
Console sales etc. are still mostly stable this year now that they have the stock to sell. So not really an increase there. Gamepass numbers might have increased, but Microsoft isn't to transparent about that. Xbox isn't going to make this 69 billion dollars back anytime soon, unless they are making there revenue grows bigger than PS and Nintendo combined. Luckily Xbox doesn't have to because Microsoft itself probably has by now. By mostly selling Windows, Cloud services and office.
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