In the window of Microsoft’s London flagship store on Oxford Circus there’s a bigger-than-lifesize all-terrain vehicle—a souvenir of the company’s $7.5 billion takeover of ZeniMax, owner of games publisher Bethesda, creator of Halo, in 2021. A year after that deal closed, Microsoft launched an even more ambitious play—a $69 billion bid for Activision Blizzard, owner of some of the games industry’s most valuable intellectual property, including Call of Duty, World of Warcraft and The Elder Scrolls.
It was the biggest cash deal in tech, and it wasn’t just about buying titles that would help shift Xboxes. On one level, it was a way to underpin Microsoft’s move beyond the console, to become
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