Amid concerns that Microsoft’s recent acquisition of Activision Blizzard for a whopping $68.7 billion could start a dangerous trend in the gaming industry, Phil Spencer is trying to calm the waters by sharing a rather conservative vision for the future.
Though, if the Xbox boss has anything to say on the matter, it’s companies like Google and Amazon buying their way into the industry that should be the real cause for concern. How, you might ask? Ironically, through what Microsoft itself just did.
In a recent interview with The Washington Post, Spencer assured Xbox fans that the company will revive some of Activision’s older IPs from the dustbin, but also went on to talk in-depth about the industry and why companies like Google, Amazon, and Facebook should keep clear due to their lack of experience and let veterans like Nintendo and Sony continue to steer the wheel.
“They have a long history in video games,” He said. “Nintendo’s not going to do anything that damages gaming in the long run because that’s the business they’re in. Sony is the same and I trust them. Valve’s the same way. When we look at the other big tech competitors for Microsoft: Google has search and Chrome, Amazon has shopping, Facebook has social, all these large-scale consumer businesses. The discussion we’ve had internally, where those things are important to those other tech companies for how many consumers they reach, gaming can be that for us.”
Spencer’s concerns aren’t strictly unreasonable, or even wrong, for that matter. Amazon and Google have both attempted to come into the gaming sphere before, and their efforts have failed spectacularly due to that same lack of experience.
You can only imagine the damage they’d cause if they tried to acquire big names like EA to bolster these attempts. Hopefully, as Phil himself hinted, the gaming’s Big Three (Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo) will coordinate from now on to stop that from happening.
