Xbox has generally been successful at creating its well-known IPs from the ground up, but recent years have forced the corporation to buy pre-existing properties from rival companies. Older Microsoft IPs like Halo and Gears of War are becoming less relevant at a time when Xbox has been able to acquire some wildly successful franchises and game studios to make up for this decline in popularity.
This strategy has been used by Xbox and Microsoft for a while, but with the recent completion of Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, things have reached a completely new level. Microsoft now owns all of the Activision Blizzard properties, giving Xbox a very outstanding array of well-known IPs from a number of its acquired companies.
Since Xbox has been collecting its original intellectual properties for the past 20 years, a large number of brands already fall under the Xbox Games Studios umbrella. With the 2002 acquisition of Rare by Microsoft, this portfolio was considerably increased.
Soon after, in 2006, Microsoft purchased Lionhead Studios to gain the rights to the Fable franchise, which would later become extremely popular under the Xbox brand. Twisted Pixel Games joined the Xbox family in 2011, and Microsoft also acquired the arcade-style brands The Maw and ‘Splosion Man.
Here are all the franchises that are currently under Microsoft’s umbrella
- Halo
- Blue Dragon
- Gears of War
- Crackdown
- Age of Empires
- Flight Simulator
- Zoo Tycoon
- Banjo-Kazooie
- Battletoads
- Conker
- Kameo
- Killer Instinct
- Kinect Sports
- Perfect Dark
- Sea of Thieves
- Viva Pinata
- Hellblade
- State of Decay
- We Happy Few
- Forza Horizon
- Wasteland
- The Bard’s Tale
- Pillars of Eternity
- Pentiment
- The Outer Worlds
- Grounded
- Avowed
- Fallout
- The Elder Scrolls
- Starfield
- Doom
- Quake
- Rage
- Wolfenstein
- Dishonored
- Prey
- Redfall
- The Evil Within
- Ghostwire: Tokyo
- Hi-Fi Rush
- Call of Duty
- Overwatch
- Diablo
- Warcraft
- Starcraft
- Guitar Hero
- Crash Bandicoot
- Spyro
- Skylanders
- Tony Hawk
- Hearthstone
- Candy Crush
2012 was a significant year for Microsoft’s studio acquisitions, as the corporation paid $2.5 billion to acquire Mojang, the company behind Minecraft. Microsoft’s ownership of such a well-known and influential game marked a turning point in the scope and ambition of its acquisitions, with Minecraft ranking second only to Tetris on the list of the best-selling video games of all time.
The Psychonauts franchise would later be acquired by Microsoft through the purchase of Double Fine in 2019, but it was ZeniMax Media’s $8.1 billion acquisition of ZeniMax Media in 2020 that truly rocked the gaming industry. With this acquisition, Xbox gained control of the Bethesda, Arkane Studios, id Software, MachineGames, and Tango Gameworks franchises.
These acquisitions gave Xbox a commendable lineup of hugely successful properties, making Microsoft’s announcement that it intended to acquire Activision Blizzard in January 2022 all the more unexpected. The size of this transaction was evident in Microsoft’s record-breaking $69B bid for the business, which sparked nearly two years of legal proceedings and regulatory disputes to stop the merger. With the acquisition of Activision the Redmond-based software giant has indeed become a behemoth of the gaming industry.
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