Sony Shares Fall 9% Following Xbox’s Announcement to Buy Activision

Microsoft’s gaming arm Xbox made a shocker of an announcement as it revealed plans to buy gaming giant Activision. The studio houses multiple developers under it, including Blizzard, and is also home to a lot of big-name games that are globally acclaimed. While this is great news for Xbox, it seems Sony is already feeling the effects of this deal even before it is completed.

The deal was quite the surprise for fans across the globe not merely because of the massive paycheck, but the magnitude of the deal as a whole. This deal also comes at a very delicate time for Activision which is going under a massive company-wide cultural change owing to the recent sexual harassment allegations on CEO Bobby Kotick. The ripples of this deal will be far reaching, but the immediate effects of the announcement are already being felt over at Sony.

According to a report, Sony suffered its biggest slump in two years almost immediately after this announcement was made. The shares price fell 9% in a single day, which is definitely not something Sony would’ve wanted.

It is safe to say that Sony’s PlayStation is Xbox’s biggest rival in global console gaming and the video games industry in general. Nintendo is right up there with them considering their brilliant track record over the years, but the PlayStation and Xbox rivalry is on a different level.

However, this acquisition has sent shockwaves across the industry, and it seems to be a concerning scenario for Sony. Even though Sony itself acquired 5 studios in 2021, Microsoft’s deal with Activision is a behemoth that Sony will find hard to compete with, simply in terms for scale. There will obviously be far reaching effects on the PlayStation ecosystem as a whole, considering Activision titles could very well be Xbox exclusives.

There is so much to uncover in this deal that will only come to light once it actually goes through. But one thing is for certain- this shifts the balance in Microsoft’s favour and Sony will find it difficult to respond to this.