When news came about that Xbox was acquiring Activision Blizzard, there was a lot of buzz going around online on what this could mean to Blizzard games on other consoles.
Talking to The Times (via VGC), Xbox head Phil Spencer talks about the acquisition, and how it is currently being investigated as to whether it would be good for competition for Xbox to acquire the massive game studio. Spencer explains, “This is an important acquisition for us. It’s not some linchpin to the long term — Xbox will exist if this deal doesn’t go through.”
One big concern with the acquisition is the Call of Duty franchise which is said to take up a huge bulk of PlayStation’s business. If anything, Microsoft has said that they have offered a contract with Sony to release every new COD game on PlayStation the same day that it releases for Xbox.
Admittedly, a lot of fans have been considering the console war to be anti-consumer, with consoles touting exclusives, forcing players to spend more on specific consoles just to check out certain games. To that, Spencer says, “To me, having us, Sony, and Nintendo doing well in the console market — all of us with strengths and uniqueness and content and capabilities — gives consumers more choice… I’d hate to see consoles go to where phones are where there are only two manufacturers. And, right now, we have three good competitors.”
We don’t know if this acquisition is going to push through smoothly, but at least we know that Xbox is confident it can survive without Blizzard.
