IMO: it's a complicated situation. Activision-Blizzard-King has been in a pretty icky spot for many years now, dating back further than just the MSFT acquisitio

IMO: it's a complicated situation. Activision-Blizzard-King has been in a pretty icky spot for many years now, dating back further than just the MSFT acquisition. I'd put the probabilities at like 90%+ that we'd see headlines very similar or worse to these if MSFT had not been allowed to buy them; more micro-transactions, layoffs, flops, weird exclusivity deals, etc. We need to cool it with the revisionist history; ABK sucked before MSFT bought them, they'd suck whether or not MSFT bought them, and you'd have to go back to like 2011 before you'd find a version of that company that's generally positive vibes. The party that got screwed by that acquisition was, ironically, Microsoft. To be clear, this isn't a new discovery or idea; everyone was saying this during the acquisition, but Microsoft's corporate story is best summarized as "makes the worst possible decision at every turn yet still somehow does ok". If there's any reason the ABK acquisition should have been blocked, it might have been to protect Microsoft from itself, much akin to how parents have to keep babies from touching the stove. ABK is a sinking ship that MSFT paid luxury yacht prices for. ABK should be renamed "King & Call of Duty Inc", but they're saddled with dozens of other properties and business divisions, including all of Blizzard, that make zero or negative money. This tethers a sinking ship, ABK, to a second sinking ship, Xbox, which similar to ABK has been sinking since, like, 2015, and hopes that the two sinking ships together might float. There's a world where maybe Xbox leadership gets more involved, cuts fat, takes direct management of key laggard properties, maybe selling some off to focus up on what's driving revenue. But, again; Microsoft sucks. Their direct management buried Halo and Gears below the ground, from industry titans to totally irrelevant. The very real situation is that their leadership has totally lost confidence even in themselves, their failures are obvious and written across the sky, and that's led them to take a hands-off approach with ABK. But, again; ABK sucked. Eventually things get so bad that someone has to step in and make the really bad tactical decisions; raising prices and layoffs. By 2030, Xbox will stagger on as an umbrella brand for a few zombie game studios + "gaming services on Windows". But, the hardware will be dead, and we'll see them begin to offload laggard studios/IPs/brands, either selling them off to other companies or spinning them off into independent companies which Microsoft holds a minority stake in.