Will Microsoft Actually Have Any Activision Blizzard Exclusives At All?

The center of the Global Regulators-Microsoft-Sony-Activision-Blizzard rat king tangle has always been Call of Duty from the start, the massive series that would then become owned by Microsoft if the $69 billion acquisition went through.

Microsoft has offered ten year deals to all its competitors short of the Souja Boy console, but Sony refuses to sign one. Phil Spencer swore under oath he’d keep Call of Duty multiplatform. It makes no fundamental economic sense to pull it, and as Spencer said, the brand could not withstand “the wrath of gamers” if it turned out they were lying and did take it exclusive, not to mention how it would damage other future Microsoft acquisitions should they go to regulators.

But fine, let’s take Microsoft at its blood oath and say Call of Duty remains exclusive. My question here is, will Microsoft actually take any Activision-Blizzard properties exclusive? I would argue no, nothing that’s current at all. Like none of it. But future games? We’ll see. For starters, here are the things available now:

King – We forget the “K” in the “ABK” of this deal too often. Microsoft has repeatedly said above all else, this deal is about getting into the mobile scene by purchasing one of its biggest players, the maker of Candy Crush and a zillion other mobile games you’ve never heard of that print money and corral more MAUs than Call of Duty and Blizzard games by far. This obviously is a huge part of this deal that has nothing to do with Xbox exclusivity and what may no longer come to PlayStation or Switch.

Diablo 4 – The cat’s out of the bag on this one. Diablo 4 has been released on all platforms before this deal closed, not that I believe Microsoft would have made it an Xbox exclusive anyway for similar reasons to Call of Duty. At best, maybe they’ll put it on Game Pass down the road, or give Xbox players bonuses like skins or currency or whatever. But exclusivity? No, and this is going to be a huge part of Blizzard’s work going forward, supporting the live vision of this game.

Overwatch 2 – The former GOTY contender has lost a whole lot of relevance, culminating in a bizarre decision to try to fashion a sequel out of a very, very large multiplayer patch and move to free-to-play. It would be decidedly odd if Microsoft pulled Overwatch 2 from PlayStation, severing another already-existing multiplayer community which they said they don’t want to do.

This is…almost the entire bulk of what Activision Blizzard King has right now. Activision has about a dozen different studios all tasked with making mainline Call of Duty games every year, or support studios helping the big ones do just that. Blizzard has lost its way in the storm pretty badly these last few years, with the exception of the well-received Diablo 4, which again, will be the bulk of its focus for a while. World of Warcraft is a PC game so it’s out of this equation altogether. If Starcraft or Warcraft returned as RTS games, those too would be PC-focused.

That leaves a bunch of mostly dormant Activision IPs that Microsoft could resurrect, like say, Hexen, recently featured on Phil Spencer’s shirt. Or Tony Hawk. Or a resurrected Guitar Hero in some fashion. King’s Quest. Skylanders. Tenchu. But you get the idea, these are all aged or outright dead properties that Microsoft would have to task teams to build from scratch, and none of them are exactly Fallout, Elder Scrolls, DOOM or Wolfenstein from the Bethesda deal. These could be made exclusives but they seem like they would have fractional impact compared to other acquisitions Microsoft has made.

So why does Microsoft want to pay $69 billion for a publisher that will not have many exclusives? Well, Call of Duty prints money each and every year, which Microsoft can rake in from PlayStation or Steam. They could also put it on Game Pass for Xbox players eventually, if they believe the subscription draw is better than selling $70 copies. King is another golden goose that they will just need to turn on and keep running indefinitely, the mobile market continuing to produce enormous profits for games that cost a fraction of what it takes to develop AAA titles.

And that may be…enough? Blizzard’s future seems unsteady at best, but Diablo 4 is a good pickup certainly. The other IPs could produce some hits, even if they’re not Bethesda-level brands. So here we are. We’ll see what happens.

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