When this was announced my question was "is Microsoft buying Call of Duty or are they buying Activision-Blizzard?" CoD is a reliable cash cow and driver for consoles with an annual game release. It makes a lot of money.

Activision-Blizzard owns a lot of valuble IP that they could absolutely further monetize. It remains to be seen if Microsoft has the vision or desire to capitalize on that. There is a huge gap with Blizzard IP mostly not being on consoles.

It's worth noting that Microsoft just became the second $3 trillion market cap company. Yet we still have the same old playbook of raising prices and cutting costs, employees be damned.

I do wonder if Microsoft will try and replace artists with AIs to further save costs.