Mergers and acquisitions in the gaming industry are often multi-billion dollar deals and generate a lot of buzz. January 2022 saw two of the largest gaming acquisitions in history occur within just one week. On January 10, Take-Two Interactive announced its acquisition of social gaming company Zynga, signaling an increased focus on mobile gaming. On January 18, 2022, Microsoft made the surprise announcement that it would acquire Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion.
Microsoft's gaming IP shopping spree
Microsoft has already been in the news since announcing its acquisition of video game holding company ZeniMax for $7.5 billion in September 2020. The deal made Microsoft the owner of ZeniMax-owned id Software, Arkane Studios, MachineGames, and Tango Gameworks, as well as publisher Bethesda Softworks' Bethesda Game Studios and ZeniMax Online Studios. In September 2014, Microsoft acquired Swedish Minecraft studio Mojang for $2.5 billion. The company's current strategy of acquiring popular studios and game publishers to produce games is not surprising, as Microsoft has been shifting more towards service games and has produced fewer first-party titles in recent years. Microsoft's Xbox content and services division revenue for the first quarter of fiscal 2022 (July-September 2021) increased 2% year-over-year.
The biggest video game acquisition in history
Until January 2022, Tencent's acquisition of Finnish game publisher Supercell in June 2016 ranked first as the largest acquisition in the video game industry, with a deal size of $8.6 billion. Supercell is a mobile game company and the developer and publisher of the highest grossing mobile title, Clash of Clans. As mobile gaming revenues explode and companies seek to capitalize on games' importance as online social spaces, the competition for top gaming content is heating up again. Games as a social space goes hand in hand with the current metaverse trend.
