Tech giant Microsoft has reached an agreement to buy video game publisher and developer Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion, they said in a statement.

The transaction will be in cash and Microsoft will pay $95 for each of Activision Blizzard’s shares, which is a 46% premium over the price at which the shares closed on Monday. The company led by Satya Nadella highlighted that after the agreement is finalized it will become the third largest video game company worldwide by revenue, only behind Tencent and Sony.

This agreement far exceeds the purchase of Zynga by Take-Two for 12,700 million, announced last week and which had become the largest acquisition agreement in the video game segment. In 2020, Microsoft also announced the purchase of ZeniMax Media, the parent company of Bethesda Softworks, one of the world’s largest private video game developers and publishers, for $7.5 billion.

Activision Blizzard owns the popular video game sagas ‘Call of Duty‘, ‘Warcraft’, ‘Diablo’, ‘Overwatch’ or ‘Candy Crush’. It has 10,000 employees and in 2020 net profits of 2,197 million and a turnover of 8,086 million dollars were recorded.

Activision CEO Bobby Kotick will retain his position, although once the deal closes, the company will report directly to Phil Spencer, the CEO of Microsoft’s video game division.

Microsoft hopes to incorporate the Activision catalog into its Game Pass subscription, which recently reached the figure of 25 million subscribers. After finalizing the agreement, the company that owns Xbox will have 30 internal game development studios.

K. Tovar

Source: Xataka

La entrada Microsoft acquires developer Activision apareció primero en Bitfinance.