On a podcast on Xboxera, former Xbox vice president Ed Fries revealed Microsoft could have bought Blizzard multiple times back in the 90s. They certainly would’ve spent much less back then compared to the price of their eventual purchase.
What started this conversation off was a question by a viewer asking Fries on acquisitions he wished could’ve occurred during his tenure at Microsoft. This leads to him recalling of two such examples, Westwood Studios and Blizzard Entertainment.
He describes the idea of buying Blizzard as one that made a lot of sense. In his own words, “I was a huge Blizzard fan. If you think about the roots of our PC gaming business, it was real-time strategy… Warcraft, of course, was their biggest product.”
Davidson and Associates, who in 1994 had acquired Blizzard back when they were known as Chaos studios, were acquired by Cendant Software in 1996. At the time, this was the first attempt by Microsoft to purchase the company. Fries recalls this moment as disappointing, saying “I just got outbid by a time-share camping business?”
The podcast revealing Microsoft could have bought Blizzard several times prior can be viewed in it’s entirety down below, timestamped to reach the relevant portion for this article.
They would later get a second chance in 1998 when Cendant software, along with Blizzard, would get put up for sale following some controversies with the parent company.
However as we all know, Vivendi, who are more recently known with their attempted takeover of Ubisoft, ended up winning the bid for Blizzard. Again to the disappointment to Fries, he said “Blizzard gets put up for sale a second time. And I bid again, and this time I get outbid by a French water utility.”
This would be the end of the former era where Microsoft could have bought Blizzard. As Fries said it became impossible after the launch of the wildly popular MMO, World of Warcraft, as this caused the developer’s value to skyrocket well beyond an amount affordable for the company.
Of course, this story did eventually end with Microsoft purchasing Blizzard, now Activision-Blizzard, after all. Though certainly not for as cheap as they likely could’ve spent back then considering the whopping 68 billion dollar price tag to their modern acquisition.
It’s interesting to think of what could’ve been had Microsoft bought Blizzard the first, or even second chance they had. Change would be expected, but would it have been for the better? I’m sure that most fans will never forget the fate of Rare after Microsoft acquired them, for example.
