Every Activision Blizzard Franchise Microsoft Will Obtain Upon Acquisition

Microsoft shocked the indus­try when they announced they would be acquir­ing the pub­lish­er Activi­sion Bliz­zard. The near­ly $70 bil­lion deal will join togeth­er two of the biggest gam­ing com­pa­nies, with Activi­sion Bliz­zard hold­ing the rights to some of the most suc­cess­ful fran­chis­es in the indus­tries his­to­ry. Of course, this will now blend in with the ever-expand­ing Microsoft universe.

The size of this deal comes from Activi­sion’s own abil­i­ty to acquire stu­dios through­out the last few decades. In 2008, Activi­sion merged with Bliz­zard, bring­ing World of War­craft under one roof with the annu­al heavy-hit­ter, Call of Duty. Bliz­zard has sev­er­al oth­er big IPs, includ­ing Over­watch and the WoW spin-off Hearthstone.

Activi­sion also delved into the mobile mar­ket, after they acquired King in 2016. That buy­out was the most prof­itable for Activi­sion, with huge mobile fran­chis­es like Can­dy Crush push­ing the nar­ra­tive. This is sig­nif­i­cant, as Microsoft has been obvi­ous­ly look­ing at the mobile market–especially with the empha­sis on its cloud gam­ing through Game Pass.

Accord­ing to Axios reporter Stephen Toti­lo, doc­u­ments show sev­er­al oth­er old­er and defunct trade­marks will also become prop­er­ty of Microsoft if and/when this acqui­si­tion is final­ized. This includes IP like Hex­en, Pit­fall!, and Gabriel Knight.

Of course, a deal of this mag­ni­tude is going to cause a stir and peo­ple have so many ques­tions about what the future holds. The biggest ones being what games will remain mul­ti­plat­form, when Activi­sion’s exten­sive library will be added to Xbox Game Pass, and what Microsoft plans to do about the acquired com­pa­nies’ cor­po­rate culture. 

You can check out a full line­up of Activi­sion Bliz­zard’s fran­chis­es, which Microsoft will own once the deal goes through.

• Activi­sion
  • Call of Duty
  • Crash Bandi­coot
  • Gui­tar Hero
  • Spy­ro the Drag­on / Skylanders
  • Tony Hawk
• Bliz­zard
  • Dia­blo
  • Hearth­stone
  • Lost Vikings
  • Over­watch
  • Star­craft
  • World of Warcraft
• King
  • Bub­ble Witch Saga
  • Can­dy Crush
  • Dia­mond Diaries Saga
  • Farm Heroes Saga
  • Pet Res­cue