When you get to the point where even Microsoft’s massive $7.5 billion acquisition of Bethesda seems like a small deal, you know we’ve gotten to a ridiculous point. Funnily enough, with Xbox in the process of acquiring one of the industry’s biggest companies in Activision Blizzard for whopping $68.7 billion, that’s exactly the point we’re at.
Understandably, the significance and sheer scale of the deal isn’t lost on the people that are making it happen either. Speaking recently with Axios, Xbox boss Phil Spencer called the deal “daunting”, and added that the Activision Blizzard acquisition is “well beyond” anything he’s ever been part of (which is saying something).
Spencer said: “That’s something well beyond anything I’ve ever done. I don’t know that I’m equipped to do it, and the responsibility for that definitely hits home.”
As the CEO of Microsoft Gaming and the head of Xbox, Spencer is going to have plenty to deal with in the coming months and years, and that’s not just because the group he leads is soon going to absorb over 10,000 employees. When the Activision Blizzard deal closes sometime next year, Microsoft is going to have plenty to content with- such as figuring out how to sort out the workplace culture issues at Activision at large to, for starters.