Xbox CFO Tim Stuart emphasises that the company’s merger with Activision Blizzard is going at a “really impressive” speed.
The industry juggernaut began the process to purchase the gaming publisher in early 2022, with the deal being finalised last month. Activision Blizzard, the studio behind the popular franchises ‘Call of Duty’, ‘Diablo’, ‘World of Warcraft’ and ‘Overwatch’ was sold to Xbox for a whopping $69 billion, the biggest deal in the gaming industry ever.
With two companies having only been one entity for a month, Tim believes that the merger is going at an incredible pace.
He said at a recent summit: "Thankfully we both talk a gaming language and even the few months since we've been a entity, the speed of which we've integrated and the speed at which we've worked together is really impressive.”
The CFO then explained why Microsoft were so interesting in acquiring Activision Blizzard in the first place.
He said: “At the highest level, it's leveraging what Activision is so good at, which is consoles, and PC, and mobile ... How do we take that great DNA, make it an accelerant to the IP that we have, leverage the great assets that they have and the expertise that they have?”
Tim concluded that although they had big plans for Activision Blizzard, gamers would not see a changing in pricing for their products, and would still offer the “great value” of the subscription model Game Pass, in which players gain access to a massive library of titles and can play as many as they please at no additional cost.
He said: “One of the great things about gaming is, if you find a way to drive value to gamers and they're paying for that value that they enjoy, it's actually a great relationship. They don't feel like they're being grinded down on the dollars.
“Like, I'm paying $17 a month and I get access to hundreds of games.The value is there. And for us, we offer most of our games if not all that we've had before Activision. When a game launches, it's included in Game Pass as well, so that's one of the unique value propositions that we have.”
