Summary
- Xbox has been acquiring popular gaming franchises and studios in recent years, compensating for the declining relevance of its own IPs like Halo and Gears of War.
- The recent acquisition of Activision Blizzard has significantly expanded Xbox's portfolio, making it one of the dominant forces in the gaming industry.
- With the acquisition, Xbox now owns a wide range of prestigious franchises from different genres, further solidifying its position at the top of the market.
While Xbox has historically done well to build its own popular IPs from the ground-up, recent years have pushed the company into acquiring pre-existing franchises from other studios. This comes at a time when older Microsoft IPs like Halo and Gears of War are dropping in relevance, and the near-unrivaled spending power of Microsoft has allowed Xbox to purchase some hugely popular franchises and gaming studios to compensate for this.
Xbox and Microsoft have been employing this tactic for some time now, but the recent finalization of Microsoft's Activision Blizzard acquisition has taken things to a whole new level. With all Activision Blizzard franchises now falling under the Microsoft name, Xbox now owns a deeply impressive roster of well-established IPs from a wide variety of its acquired studios.
The Activision Blizzard Acquisition: All the Franchises That Xbox Now Owns
A lot of franchises already fall under the Xbox Games Studios name, with Xbox curating its own home-grown IPs over the past two decades. These franchises include:
- Halo
- Blue Dragon
- Gears of War
- Crackdown
- Age of Empires
- Flight Simulator
- Zoo Tycoon
This portfolio was significantly expanded with Microsoft's purchase of Rare in 2002. The $375M move saw Xbox acquire or eventually produce:
- Banjo-Kazooie
- Battletoads
- Conker
- Kameo
- Killer Instinct
- Kinect Sports
- Perfect Dark
- Sea of Thieves
- Viva Pinata
Shortly after this in 2006, Microsoft acquired Lionhead Studios to secure the rights to the Fable franchise, which would go on to be very successful under the Xbox name. 2011 saw Twisted Pixel Games join the Xbox family, with the arcade-style franchises The Maw and 'Splosion Man also becoming Microsoft entities.
2012 was a huge year for Microsoft's studio head-hunting, with the company acquiring Minecraft developer Mojang in a $2.5B deal. With Minecraft being second to only Tetris in the best-selling games of all time list, Microsoft's control over such a popular and influential game marked a turning point in the scale and ambition of its acquisitions.
For example, 2018 saw Microsoft acquire Ninja Theory, Undead Labs, Compulsion Games, Playground Games, inXile Entertainment, and Obsidian Entertainment. This spate of purchases saw Xbox take ownership of:
- Hellblade
- State of Decay
- We Happy Few
- Forza Horizon
- Wasteland
- The Bard's Tale
- Pillars of Eternity
- Pentiment
- The Outer Worlds
- Grounded
- Avowed
Microsoft would go on to purchase Double Fine in 2019 to acquire the Psychonauts franchise, but it was 2020's $8.1B acquisition of ZeniMax Media that really shook the gaming industry. This purchase gave Xbox ownership of the Bethesda, Arkane Studios, id Software, MachineGames, and Tango Gameworks franchises, placing the following big names in the Xbox roster:
- Fallout
- The Elder Scrolls
- Starfield
- Doom
- Quake
- Rage
- Wolfenstein
- Dishonored
- Prey
- Redfall
- The Evil Within
- Ghostwire: Tokyo
- Hi-Fi Rush
These acquisitions combined to give Xbox a commendable roster of extremely popular franchises, which only made it more surprising when Microsoft announced its intention to purchase Activision Blizzard in January 2022. The magnitude of this acquisition was reflected in Microsoft's record-setting offer of $69B for the company, leading to almost two years of regulatory battles and lawsuits attempting to block the purchase. Following the UK CMA's eventual approval of the deal, Xbox now officially owns Activision Blizzard, as well as these prestigious franchises:
- Call of Duty
- Overwatch
- Diablo
- Warcraft
- Starcraft
- Guitar Hero
- Crash Bandicoot
- Spyro
- Skylanders
- Tony Hawk
- Hearthstone
- Candy Crush
The Activision Blizzard acquisition now puts Xbox as one of the most dominant forces in the gaming industry, taking ownership of several franchises that sit at the top of their respective genres. It remains to be seen if Microsoft's ambition will lead to any more acquisitions in the near future, but Xbox already has a full plate with the immense amount of IPs it now owns.