Usually, you would wait until the day after Halloween to buy discounted candy from the grocery store. Doesn’t seem like Activision got the memo on this one as we’ve learned that Candy Crush Saga developer, King, has been bought by Activision for $5.9 billion!
This is a huge acquisition for Activision, and CEO Bobby Kotik knows this:
The combined revenues and profits solidify our position as the largest, most profitable standalone company in interactive entertainment. With a combined global network of more than half a billion monthly active users, our potential to reach audiences around the world on the device of their choosing enables us to deliver great games to even bigger audiences than ever before.
With this purchase, Activision now has control over some of the most lucrative franchises out there effectively infiltrating every market that a gamer could spend money in, from casual to hardcore.
Activision Blizzard believes that the addition of King’s highly-complementary business will position Activision Blizzard as a global leader in interactive entertainment across mobile, console and PC platforms, and positions the company for future growth. The combined company will have a world-class interactive entertainment portfolio of top-performing franchises, including two of the top five highest-grossing mobile games in the U.S. (Candy Crush Saga®, Candy Crush Soda Saga™), the world’s most successful console game franchise (Call of Duty®), and the world’s most successful personal computing franchise (World of Warcraft®), as well as such well known franchises as Blizzard Entertainment’s Hearthstone®: Heroes of Warcraft™,StarCraft®, and Diablo® and Activision Publishing’s Guitar Hero®,Skylanders® and Destiny, along with over 1,000 game titles in its library.
