And so it’s finally over. Last week, Microsoft completed its $69bn purchase of Activision Blizzard, sealing a deal that many called the biggest in video game history (although they are overlooking the 1965 merger of Nihon Goraku Bussan and Rosen Enterprises to form the glorious Sega Enterprises, but let’s not get into that).
Microsoft was keen to slightly downplay the significance of the moment in its own press release, pointing out that it will become only, “the world’s third-largest [emphasis my own] gaming company by revenue, behind Tencent and Sony”. However, we all understand the awesome power it now wields, with Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Overwatch and Candy Crush Saga under its command.
How will this affect us, the gamers? Not much to begin with. There won’t be a sudden influx of Activision Blizzard titles on the Xbox Game Pass subscription service. In his blogpost on the acquisition, Xbox chief Phil Spencer would only say: “Today we start the work to bring beloved Activision, Blizzard and King franchises to Game Pass and other platforms. We’ll share more about when you can expect to play in the coming months. We know you’re excited – and we are too.” There are clearly a lot of details to iron out.
We can also be sure that Call of Duty won’t become an Xbox exclusive – at least not for a decade – as Microsoft has inked a deal to keep it on other platforms. For all the other Activision titles, there have been no such assurances. As we saw with Bethesda, console exclusivity is clearly part of the Microsoft agenda – Starfield and the forthcoming Elder Scrolls VI are Xbox-only – but with online multiplayer titles such as Overwatch, calculations will need to be made whether exclusivity is really a better deal than encouraging a wide platform-agnostic community.
Meanwhile, Microsoft assuaged the UK competition authority’s worries about the cloud gaming sector by handing over the streaming rights of Activision Blizzard games to Ubisoft – but in its press release on the matter, that company would not commit to a timeframe in which we’re likely to see titles popping up on its Ubisoft+ service, so it’ll be a while before we know what that all means.
One of the most positive elements to come out of the deal has very little to do with us players, or at least not directly: Activision Blizzard employees will now be able to form unions. A statement from the Communication Workers of America noted that Microsoft would take a neutral approach to unionisation – in stark contrast to the Activision Blizzard management, which, according to the CWA, met attempts to unionise with “illegal retaliation and attempts to delay and block union elections”. There will surely be worrying times ahead for Activision Blizzard staff as they wait to see how Microsoft will implement their roles into its Xbox business. In January Microsoft laid off 10,000 staff as part of cost-cutting measures, and there will surely be duplicated roles in Activision’s management and production infrastructures.
But while this was certainly a seismic deal, the idea of corporate consolidation is far from new in the games industry. Electronic Arts spent much of the late 1990s and early 2000s purchasing multiple studios and smaller publishers. The once-giant French company Infogrames, now known as Atari, bought dozens of developers during the same period, as did Take-Two Interactive. Covering the industry for Edge magazine at the time, I’d often see long predatory lines of sales and purchases, as ever-larger companies swallowed up their more vulnerable peers.
One example, involves the developer of Grand Theft Auto and Lemmings, DMA Design. This small Dundee outfit was acquired by Gremlin Interactive in 1997, which itself was then bought by Infogrames two years later, which folded into a new group, Atari in 2003. The Gremlin name went to Warner Bros and Grand Theft Auto was originally published by BMG Interactive, which was then sold to Take-Two before becoming part of Rockstar Games. Confused? I’m not surprised.
The point is, I am not excited or even intrigued by this deal. I’ve seen it all before. All that matters is the games that come out of it and how good they are; and that the people who make the games get the chance to do so with creative autonomy and respect. It doesn’t matter who published Doom at whatever stage in its lifecycle (because several companies have had a bash, believe me) – what matters is that Doom is a brilliant game and that it survives today for all to discover.
If we look across at other media, only the most obsessive fans know which film distributors or record labels produced the classic movies and albums they love. Sure, there are rare examples of companies that have stamped an absolutely indelible mark on their output – Motown, Def Jam, RKO Pictures, Shaw Brothers, A24 – but very few of us actively look forward to the new one from Lionsgate or Sony Music Entertainment.
One thing Xbox’s Spencer always says is that it’s the games that matter. I agree. Nintendo rarely indulges in spending sprees on external companies, yet it has made some of the greatest games of all time. Is there some sort of connection between not subscribing to the “endless expansion by any means” mantra and overseeing a reliable production line of brilliant games that people love and admire? Could it be that quality is more important than corporate moving, shaking and muscle flexing? Now that, is a $69bn question.
What to play
Encountering a new Sonic game can be stressful for lifelong Sega fans like myself who still wake up every night in a cold sweat remembering Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric. But I can confirm that Sonic Superstars is one of the good ones, a luscious, loving tribute to the Mega Drive glory days of the character with enough modern twists – including co-op multiplayer – to keep things fresh. Level design is as intricate as ever, and the music genuinely rocks. It’s not a classic up there with Sonic 2, Sonic Rush or Sonic CD, but it’s in the reliable middling domain of Sonic Colors and Sonic Advance.
Available on: PC, PS4/5, Switch, Xbox
Playtime: 10-20 hours
What to read
Naturally, there’s been a lot of industry comment on the Microsoft deal, but this piece by James Batchelor at Gamesindustry.biz is a useful summation. James has also written a book on The Best Non-Violent Video Games, which is worth a read if you have kids getting into gaming or you just refuse to kill people in video games.
Meanwhile, over on PlayStation, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is attracting very positive reviews (including mine below), giving it a score of 91 on the Metacritic website. Polygon has a good piece on how the game reinvents the history of Spider-Man, and it begins with an Angela Carter quote, which makes it the best games article of the week.
I also really enjoyed this short personal essay entitled “Growing up on Halo” by writer Rae Maybee. It perfectly captures how games often fit into the tapestries of family life.
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What to click
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 review – a big, wholehearted fantasy full of conflict and emotion
Forza Motorsport review – an icy, luxuriant driving sim that honours raw V8 power
Saltsea Chronicles review – beguiling marine mystery is a delightful adventure
Question Block
This question comes from Tombo, who wrote on Twitter/X:
“I have heard and indulged in much nostalgia for games from decades past. As technology has moved on such that newer games are demonstrably better now, is [an interest in games past] pure nostalgia for childish things, or have we lost something as games have advanced?”
This is a complicated question because when we think about older games, we are drawing in many cultural, autobiographical, technical and social strands. I don’t think our love of retro games is merely nostalgia – there are experiences such as Tetris, Pac-Man, Defender, Qix and Minefield that hold up today, because they are based around ludic experiences that could not be improved by better visuals or larger worlds. Pac-Man would not be a better game if it took place in a 4K 3D landscape, yet it remains a compulsive experience, even though the game file is a teeny 24KB.
When we think of older games, we also need to consider the technical breakthroughs they represented at the time. Super Mario 64 and Grand Theft Auto III look ancient now, but they conceived the 3D future of the games industry so their value transcends nostalgia.
Have we lost anything in the modern age? Perhaps there was a sort of innocence and naivety to games – especially home video games – in the early 1980s. Programmers had no conception of genre conventions or archetypes. When you played a game such as Attack of the Mutant Camels, Sentinel, Paradroid or Lords of Midnight, you had no concept of how they fitted into the games industry pantheon of ideas. Terms such as “arcade adventure”, “platformer” and “shooter” were just forming.
Weird uncatagoriseable games are still being created, though, and I am still optimistic and excited by them.