Microsoft has developed a growing reputation in recent years for the frequency of high-profile acquisitions of gaming studios that the company is facilitating. Given the massive spending power of the longstanding tech giant, some of the most high-profile acquisitions in the entire industry have been confirmed or proposed over the past few years.

Many have pointed out how this could be Microsoft's way of competing with the exclusives boasted by the likes of Sony's PlayStation platform, with many of the games to come from Microsoft-owned studios having Xbox Game Pass benefits and even exclusivity to the platform. With Microsoft now owning a huge array of very successful studios and the relevant IPs that come from them, it is important to contextualize just how many studios now fall under the Microsoft name.

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Rare

Rare logo

Microsoft actually began its trend of acquiring influential and high-profile game studios all the way back in 2000, with its acquisition of Rare for $375,000,000. Rare has a long and successful history, being the studio behind the likes of GoldenEye 007, the Banjo-Kazooie franchise, and more recent titles such as Sea of Thieves.

Rare was initially affiliated with Nintendo in its early years but has since become a staple of Xbox Game Studios since its acquisition in 2000. The company worked closely on Xbox's Kinect program, as well as developing Xbox exclusives such as Viva Pinata and Perfect Dark Zero. The value of Microsoft's acquisition of Rare is more than present in the 2015 compilation titled Rare Replay, an Xbox-exclusive collection of 30 classic Rare titles for fans of the console to enjoy.

Mojang

Minecraft Mojang logo

Microsoft completed another huge gaming acquisition in 2014, when it acquired Minecraft developer Mojang for $2.5 billion. It is no secret that Minecraft is one of the most successful IPs of all time, with the deep replayability of the sandbox title being enjoyed by millions of players across the globe.

One of the major tenets of Microsoft's purchase of Mojang was to allow the company to maintain its freedom and autonomy over its IP, which would become a core staple of Microsoft's acquisition acumen going forward. Under Microsoft's ownership, Minecraft has enjoyed several key content updates, as well as a growing catalog of well-received spin-off titles for the franchise. Minecraft Dungeons was released in 2020 as a popular Xbox Game Pass title, and the upcoming RTS title Minecraft Legends is set to release at some point during 2023.

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ZeniMax Media (Bethesda, id Software, Arkane)

xbox bethesda exclusive

Microsoft secured an even larger spate of acquisitions in 2020 with its purchase of video game holding company ZeniMax Media in a deal worth $8.1 billion. The deal was a decidedly comprehensive one, with Microsoft subsequently holding ownership of a range of well-established and successful video game studios.

As a result of the deal, Microsoft Studios now boasts the likes of id Software, who develop the Doom, Quake, and Rage franchises, Arkane Studios, who developed Prey, Dishonored, and the upcoming Redfall, as well as Machine Games, ZeniMax Online Studios, and Tango Gameworks. However, the largest studio to fall under the Microsoft name thanks to this deal is without a doubt Bethesda.

Crucially, Bethesda develops the Fallout and The Elder Scrolls franchises, which have historically produced some of the most successful and culturally significant RPG titles that gaming has ever seen. The significance of having these IPs, as well as the aforementioned ones, fall under the Microsoft name is huge from an industry perspective. This deal understandably attracted huge amounts of attention and discourse surrounding the kind of presence Microsoft was beginning to develop within the gaming space. With the hotly-anticipated Starfield being confirmed as an Xbox and PC exclusive title, the benefits of this deal from a Microsoft perspective are clear to see.

Activision Blizzard King

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The most recent proposed gaming studio acquisition by Microsoft is undoubtedly its most ambitious and controversial, with the company announcing its intentions to purchase Activision Blizzard for a staggering $68.7 billion in January 2022. The price tag of this deal alone was enough to draw massive amounts of media and community attention, with the acquisition being a record-breaking deal from a price-tag perspective should it be confirmed.

Activision and Blizzard merged back in 2008 to form a truly powerful holding company, with the IPs that come under the name being some of the most successful and well-known in the entire industry. Blizzard's IPs include Warcraft, Starcraft, and Overwatch, which by themselves are enough to significantly bolster the scope of Microsoft's roster. However, many consider Activision's franchises to be the main source of controversy around the deal, with Call of Duty being the overwhelming focal point.

Should the deal be finalized, Microsoft would own the aforementioned franchises associated with Blizzard as well as the hugely influential Call of Duty IP, which generates billions per year with its frequent releases and lucrative microtransaction systems. The potential influence that Microsoft could hold should this deal go through has led to an intense legal and industrial backlash, which has thrown the eventual success of the deal into question.

Microsoft's direct competitors such as Sony have been the largest critics of the Activision Blizzard deal, who claim that the deal would significantly hamper fair competition in the way of making such high-profile titles exclusive or more accessible on Xbox. While the future of this particular deal is uncertain, it remains clear that Microsoft has employed a consistent and highly successful ethos towards gaming studio acquisitions over the years that only seems to be growing in ambition.

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