Facts: Activision Blizzard
American game giant Activision Blizzard had almost 10,000 employees last year.
The company consists of three major segments. These are Activision – which develops “Call of duty”, Blizzard – which, among other things, makes “World of Warcraft”, and Swedish-founded King – which makes the mobile game “Candy Crush”.
The main office is in Santa Monica, California. The company also has offices in Irvine in the same state, in New York, Wisconsin, London, Barcelona and Stockholm.
Earlier in December, the FTC filed a lawsuit to block Microsoft’s acquisition. The reason is that the FTC believes that the deal would distort competition in the gaming industry.
But when Microsoft responds to the suit, the company is expected to argue that it is a smaller player in the industry than competitors Sony and Nintendo.
Microsoft chairman Brad Smith said at a meeting with shareholders on Tuesday that the deal would be “good for gamers, good for consumers, good for game developers and good for competition,” writes the Wall Street Journal.
Smith highlighted that Sony with Playstation has a significantly larger market share than Microsoft with Xbox.
Microsoft also describes the acquisition as “vertical”, where it buys a supplier rather than a competitor.
Much is about Activision Blizzard’s extremely popular game series “Call of duty”. The FTC fears that future games in the series will be released exclusively for the Xbox or otherwise be limited on competitors’ game consoles.
At the same time, Microsoft has recently proposed a ten-year agreement for the games to continue to be released by competitors.
Activision Blizzard is one of the world’s largest game companies and the deal is worth 68.7 billion dollars, equivalent to 711 billion kroner.