One of the major flaws with Microsoft’s Xbox console is the lack of exclusive titles to distinguish them from their rivals Sony and Nintendo. However, recently Microsoft has been lacking on that front so Microsoft announced their acquisition of gaming giant Activision Blizzard if this deal goes through Microsoft will own the rights to “Diablo,” “Call of Duty,” “Warcraft,” “Overwatch” and “Candy Crush” and this merger will be the biggest in gaming history by a landslide. Recently, Brazilian and Japanese regulators have approved of the merger and Microsoft is pressuring the Federal Trade Commission to approve the acquisition. 

“It will probably not affect me at all but I hope they get rid of the Blizzard launcher because it is annoying to have it and is laggy and over all just garbage,” freshman Parker Wales said. “It doesn’t really matter that much to be honest. They already have plans on contracts with Playstation to be on all platforms. The only change that probably will happen is that it will be added to Gamepass.”

Microsoft has promised that all of their first-party games will be released on their subscription service Game Pass on the same day of launch. But some are not approving of Microsoft choosing to acquire a company with a scandalous history like Activision Blizzard.

“[Activision Blizzard] has had experience with harsh work environments,” junior Nathan Nemetez said.

Nemetez said he believes Microsoft could turn around the situation with Activision Blizzard.

“Microsoft offers these new innovations[better technology and more resources] with new minds working on the games with opportunity to listen to the fan base,” Nemetez said.

But sophomore Catalina Pelliare said she’s concerned about the power this acquisition gives to Microsoft.

“I’m not really happy about it,” she said. “Monopolies nowadays are becoming a bigger and bigger issue, because even though we don’t have monopolies in the sense that there’s only one big company ruling over an industry, now we just have three or four companies tops ruling over it and that’s still quite bad. I don’t really like this either, since making things less accessible to people is never really a good thing. Plus, I personally am not a big fan of Xbox in general, so it’s really just putting off more potential new players from trying the game for no good reason.”

By Aashish Adireddy