Earlier today, Microsoft announced their agreement for the acquisition of Activision Blizzard. The deal will see Microsoft buy out Activision’s shares for $95 apiece, a transaction valued at a total of $68.7 billion that includes Activision’s net cash. Despite this, the merger of Microsoft and Activision Blizzard still means that Microsoft will only be the third largest gaming company in the world according to revenue, placing behind Tencent and Sony.
How much is Sony worth?
Niko Partners Senior Analyst Daniel Ahmad provided the figures for the year ending in April 2021 and Sony was valued at $22.67 billion. This meant they were the second biggest gaming company in the world behind Tencent, who were valued at $29.3 billion after including the gaming revenue from their social networks too. At the time, Microsoft was valued at $13.83 billion, which put them in fourth place (Nintendo took up the third spot at $15.79 billion). All three console providers included revenue from games and hardware.
If the revenue of Microsoft and Activision Blizzard was combined for 2021, their value would have been “~$21.9 billion” and would have placed them comfortably in third. We can assume with Microsoft’s statement today that the placings are still accurate. Only estimates are available for the companies’ current value in gaming revenue with accurate figures expected in April 2022.
Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard is throwing out quite a bit of news today. Any PlayStation exclusive content from Activision titles will likely end after Call of Duty: Vanguard, while issues with that game and Call of Duty: Warzone are currently being blamed on poor leadership. You can have your say on the acquisition and what this might mean for Sony in our reader’s opinion, while you can also take a guess at which studio Sony might acquire next.
