Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard, will it also get involved in NFT like other game manufacturers?
Tech giant Microsoft dropped a bombshell yesterday in the video game and metaverse industry.
The company announced that it will acquire Activision Blizzard, one of the world's largest video game companies, which owns Call of Duty, World of Warcraft and Overwatch, in an all-cash deal valued at approximately $75 billion. Pioneer" and other popular games. The acquisition will accelerate the growth of Microsoft's gaming business across mobile, PC, console and cloud, and will provide the building blocks for Metaverse.
If this deal is completed, it will greatly expand the scale of Microsoft's game business, and Microsoft will naturally become the third largest game company in the world by revenue after Tencent and Sony.
Metaverse is a term that describes the vision of the future of the Internet. Users can interact through avatars in this shared virtual world, which is expected to become a more immersive new way of social entertainment and online work. Users can interoperate across platforms, and blockchain technology and encrypted assets (including NFTs) will play an important role.
Ethereum blockchain-based virtual world games such as Decentraland and The Sandbox are seen as early examples of the Metaverse, allowing users to buy, customize and trade virtual land in the form of NFTs. Facebook has also expressed great interest in the Metaverse, changing its parent company's name to Meta in October last year, taking Metaverse as an important business for the company's next phase.
Bloomberg once predicted that if the current fiery development trend remains unchanged, the market size of the metaverse may reach 800 billion US dollars by 2024.
While Activision Blizzard has yet to make moves in the Metaverse or NFT, blockchain gaming space, Microsoft has been involved in the crypto industry for years.
As early as 2015, Microsoft announced a partnership with Ethereum software technology company ConsenSys. Beyond that, the software and tech giant seems to be "preferring" the NFT space so far.
In February last year, Microsoft launched a small experiment around NFT, and cooperated with the blockchain game development platform Enjin to launch a limited number of NFTs to commemorate the "International Women in Science Day". Users only need to complete a game called "Azure Space Mystery". Web games are available. These NFTs have additional functions: by logging into the MyMetaverse server in the game "My World" and connecting the Enjin wallet, users can complete follow-up tasks in "Minecraft" to unlock more collectibles, such as "XX & XY Certified Equal,” a “tokenized certificate that encourages chromosome and all gender equality.”
In December, Microsoft's M12 venture fund led the investment in Palm NFT Studio, an Ethereum sidechain that focuses on brand customization and NFT as the center, and focuses on "energy saving". “Microsoft is starting to look beyond private, permissioned blockchain implementations and into broader use cases,” Dan Heyman, the project’s CEO, said in an interview. Estimated to be 99% less than the Ethereum mainnet, another reason to attract Microsoft.
Also noteworthy is the ION network launched by Microsoft, a decentralized identity (DID) network built on top of the Bitcoin blockchain. ION does not process payments, but is designed to handle identity and access to online accounts. The network took four years to develop, with contributors familiar to crypto users ConsenSys, Casa, BitPay, Gemini, Protocol Labs (IPFS) and Cloudflare.
A week after Facebook rebranded last year, Microsoft also announced its entry into the “new battlefield” of the Metaverse.
At the Ignite developer event in November, Microsoft proposed the vision of augmented reality and virtual reality (AR/VR) meetings in Mesh for Teams, combining AR/VR functions with online meeting tools to make remote meetings more immersive territory. Companies/organizations can build virtual spaces, and users can join meetings with their own custom avatars (still pictures, videos, etc.) as virtual avatars.
Katie Kelly, principal program manager for Mesh for Teams at Microsoft, explained in a statement: "First, we're going to get audio cues so when you speak, your face comes to life. ...You Your hands move. ... You experience a sense of immersion. ... Our goal is to keep an eye on this with Microsoft's artificial intelligence technology, so we can use the camera to cue you where your mouth is, and mimic your head and facial movements."
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The display picture comes from: Hmdview
Current Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said at its annual meeting in November 2021 that virtual reality goggles and gloves will be released in 2022. In addition, Microsoft will launch nearly 100 new services in 3 areas including Metaverse.
“As the digital and physical worlds merge, we are creating a whole new platform layer, the Metaverse. In a sense, the Metaverse allows us to embed computing into the real world, and the real world into into computing, thereby bringing a real presence to any digital space."
Additionally, Nadella said people are "absolutely expecting" to see Microsoft integrate Metaverse features with the Xbox console, but didn't reveal any specific plans or specifics.
Back to the topic, which is "the acquisition of Activision Blizzard accelerates the growth of Microsoft's games and will provide the cornerstone of the metaverse".
As part of the acquisition, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick will remain at the helm until the deal closes, at which point he will hand over to Microsoft Games CEO Phil Spencer. Spencer welcomed the addition of Activision Blizzard in a blog post on the Xbox console, and will work hard to add as many of Activision's popular titles to the Xbox as possible. But there is no mention of metaverse and NFT, it seems that these areas have been strongly opposed by some players in the gaming community.
Recently, some traditional video game manufacturers are eager to move towards NFT and NFT-driven blockchain games, but their actions have not been smooth sailing.
Square Enix, the developer behind "Final Fantasy", announced the development of a game with NFT as the core, and Electronic Arts (EA) also expressed interest in the NFT field.
Last week, Take-Two Interactive, the parent company behind Grand Theft Auto, bought mobile game developer Zynga for $12.7 billion. Zynga will start developing NFT-based games in late 2021, and Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said about the acquisition: He believes the combined company will better respond to "Web3 opportunities."
Behavior, the developer of "Death by Daylight", launched the game character NFT, but was criticized by players on the grounds that "NFT consumes energy, is a scam, and has no value". Negative reviews”, forcing Behavior to issue a compromise statement: “We understand your concerns about NFTs. Dead by Daylight definitely does not contain blockchain technology and never will. We will never sell NFTs.”
Another example is "Stalker 2: Heart of Chernobyl", the developer behind it, GSC Game World, announced that it will add NFT characters to the game and sell them as development funds for the sequel. However, the company canceled its NFT plans after receiving negative criticism from gamers.
Ubisoft, the developer behind "Assassin's Creed", launched NFT-centric game items in December last year. When releasing the news, it also repeatedly mentioned the energy consumed by a single transaction on its Tezos blockchain. It is "1 million times less" than Bitcoin to prove that its NFT is "energy-saving". However, this move still made Ubisoft suffer from criticism.
According to the "Notice on Further Preventing and Dealing with the Risk of Hype in Virtual Currency Transactions" issued by the central bank and other departments, the content of this article is only for information sharing, and does not promote or endorse any operation and investment behavior. Participate in any illegal financial practice.
risk warning:
According to the "Notice on Further Preventing and Dealing with the Risk of Hype in Virtual Currency Transactions" issued by the central bank and other departments, the content of this article is only for information sharing, and does not promote or endorse any operation and investment behavior. Participate in any illegal financial practice.
