Founded in 1979, Activision is home to some of the most popular game franchises in the world, including Candy Crush, Guitar Hero, Skylanders, Destiny, Crash Bandicoot and the Tony Hawk skateboarding titles. Its Call of Duty franchise is arguably Activision Blizzard’s most important business. In 2020, the company’s Activision segment – nearly all of which is Call of Duty – accounted for 55 per cent of the company’s operating profit.
Driving Microsoft’s ambition is its Game Pass subscription service, which gives members access to all of its first-party games – those from the studios it owns – for no extra charge, and on the day of their commercial release. Recently, it has added titles from other publishers, such as Electronic Arts, but owning the underlying developers gives Microsoft the freedom to keep the most popular titles from competing platforms, such as the PlayStation.
Microsoft is also banking on the rise in mobile gaming, the fastest-growing part of the industry and one of the software giant’s weak spots. Earlier this month, Take-Two Interactive Software agreed to buy mobile game maker Zynga in a deal valued at $US11 billion to help the publisher of Grand Theft Auto break into the market for smartphone games.
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