The recent announcement of the Microsoft acquisition of Activision Blizzard was the talk of the gaming industry throughout last week. The record acquisition will bring Activision Blizzard to Microsoft. But there is more to that move. Activision Blizzard is behind many franchises that are currently popular or were popular some time back but haven’t seen another release. Here are all the franchises added through the acquisition:
- Blur
- Caesar
- Call of Duty
- Candy Crush
- Crash Bandicoot
- Diablo
- DJ Hero
- Empire Earth
- Gabriel Knight
- Geometry Wars
- Guitar Hero
- Gun
- Hearthstone
- Heroes of the Storm
- Hexen
- Interstate ’76
- King’s Quest
- Laura Bow Mysteries
- The Lost Vikings
- Overwatch
- Phantasmagoria
- Pitfall
- Police Quest
- Prototype
- Quest for Glory
- Singularity
- Skylanders
- Soldier of Fortune
- Space Quest
- Spyro the Dragon
- StarCraft
- Tenchu
- TimeShift
- Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater
- True Crime
- Warcraft
- Zork
Call of Duty is one of the names that stands out in this move. The popular series of action games have been around for many years, with some of those releases doing very well. The list also includes some titles that have been popular before, including Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and Spyro the Dragon. One recently saw a remake of the first two games while the other got a remaster of the first three releases. Franchises such as Crash Bandicoot recently got another release. The fourth game was released after a long wait but the franchise had made a solid return right before with the collection of the remaster of the first three games.
Other titles such as Empire Earth and True Crime haven’t seen releases in a very long time. The acquisition has brought up all kinds of rumors on the games that Microsoft could bring back in the near future. They have plenty to work with after the record move but we’ll probably have to wait a while since all of this could take years to be fully completed.
What do you think about the move? Which franchises would you like to see come back? Let us know in the comments.
