With what is surely the news so far this year, Microsoft took over Activision-Blizzard almost exactly a month ago for a total amount of nothing less that 70,000 million dollars. This movement gave rise to some speculation about the future of Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision who will remain in the position for a while, and who was accused of inaction in the face of harassment allegations within the company. Today we learned from a Kotaku report that Phil Spencer started talking to Kotick just three days after those allegations surfaced.
Timeline of a record operation
This news comes through a bureaucratic procedure to complete for the acquisition to be carried out, and where you can see a complete chronology of the events so far. As we know, it was on the 16th when the Wall Street Journal echoed the internal problems at Activision, and just two days later, Phil Spencer wrote an internal email to Microsoft and Xbox employees expressing great concern about what had happened, while that he acknowledged to be “evaluating” the relations between both companies.
According to that report, the next day, November 19, Phil Spencer called Kotick to assure him that Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, wanted to speak with him, anticipating that “Microsoft was interested in discuss strategic opportunities”.
Finally, Nadella called Kotick to announce that the opportunities Spencer was talking about were an acquisition by the Redmond company. In another order of news related to this purchase, and that is of particular concern to PlayStation users, Microsoft has assured that they have no intention of depriving these of the Call of Duty saga, although they have not done specific mention of other important franchises such as Overwatch or Diablo, among many others.
Source: Kotaku