Microsoft seriously shook up the video game world this week when it was revealed the company is hammering out a deal to acquire Activision Blizzard. The deal, which is worth $68.7 billion, dwarves anything the gaming business has ever seen before, even hugely overshadowing the monster deal by Microsoft to bring Bethesda on board, making many of its upcoming titles Xbox exclusives.
Xbox has already hammered home its plans to bring a number of Activision Blizzard titles to Game Pass in the future. It's also very likely some of the newly acquired studio's massive IPs become Xbox exclusives in the future. The likes of Call Of Duty and Overwatch becoming exclusive to Xbox will change the industry should it happen, and even though that potential eventuality is still a long way off, PlayStation is already feeling the squeeze.
Bloomberg revealed Sony's market valuation fell 13% in Tokyo on Wednesday after the news of Microsoft's mammoth acquisition broke. That's the biggest drop Sony's valuation has experienced in a single day since 2008. That 13% equates to an eye-watering $20 billion lost from Sony's value less than 24 hours after the acquisition was announced. A clear sign, if you needed it, that Activision Blizzard moving under the Xbox umbrella is a huge threat to PlayStation and the games it will, and won't, be able to showcase on its consoles in the future.
Xbox piled on the good news during the same announcement in which it revealed its $70 billion acquisition. Phil Spencer also revealed Game Pass has now surpassed 25 million subscribers. With the likelihood that annual Call Of Duty titles will be coming to the service on launch day in the future, not to mention World of Warcraft, Diablo, Crash Bandicoot, and any other number of Activision Blizzard properties, that number is only going to keep growing.
While Sony's value dropped a significant amount following the acquisition, other studios enjoyed a bump in the Tokyo market following the news. Square Enix and Capcom's values both jumped by more than 3.7%. Analysts explained that studios with strong IPs under their umbrellas, like Activision Blizzard, have increased in value, potentially ahead of Sony and Nintendo looking to retaliate to Microsoft's acquisition with one or two of their own.