On the 18th of January 2022, Microsoft announced its plans to acquire Activision Blizzard King, kicking off an enormous process mired in complex, yet often highly entertaining legal proceedings. 546 days later – and counting – we now seem to be approaching the end of this epic. As I write this, the deadline for completing the deal has been shifted to October 18th, but with the FTC’s various attempts to stop the acquisition/merger having resulted in failure and the UK’s CMA seemingly eager to reach an accommodation, it now seems inevitable that Microsoft will get what it wants.
Looking back, I remember going on holiday just as the initial news was revealed, quickly contacting my colleagues to suggest recording a DF Direct Special on the topic. Today, we’re doing it together, albeit with a different line-up! Myself and John Linneman can finally talk at length about the proceedings of the last 18 months, having purposefully distanced ourselves from most of the miniatiae in our standard DF Direct Weekly shows.
And to add an authoritative voice who does actually have a grasp on the detail – unlike ours! – we’re thrilled that Tom Warren from The Verge agreed to join us. From my own personal perspective, Tom’s Twitter feed and articles on The Verge have been essential reading, not just in delivering the news – but also in explaining what it all actually means.
And of course, myself and John Linneman have plenty to contribute to the show too. Microsoft has promised to bring Call of Duty to the Nintendo Switch, the firm’s headline pitch being to make COD available to over 150 million more players – but to what extent can that strategy actually be realised? The current IW9 engine is a masterpiece of scalability and still delivers a great experience on 10-year-old PlayStation 4 hardware, but it was never designed with Nintendo Switch in mind. Cuts can be made, but would it still be the fully featured Call of Duty game Microsoft promised? Is a COD game still a COD game if, for example, it has to run at 30 frames per second, in line with other Switch ‘impossible ports’? Cloud streaming for the PC version remains an option, but the real world utility of this is far from ideal owing to the Switch’s sub-par WiFi.