The announcement of the purchase of ActivisionBlizzard by Xbox was not only the great news of January, but one of the most important that we will have this year in terms of video games. However, beyond the games, Microsoft knows that it has a lot of work ahead of it with the North American company. In that sense, we now know that Microsoft will monitor Activision Blizzard executives to make decisions when the deal closes. This has been made known by the president of the Redmond corporation, Brad Smith, in an interview with CNBC (via VGC).
“What we have said is that there will be some aspects that will change, but everything will be a new team that will work together. Most importantly, we want to see the culture evolve. We’ll see how people perform between now and the day the deal closes, assuming it goes through, and then we’ll have a chance to make sure we have the right people in the correct position”, the head of Microsoft has recognized without half measures. After that, the interviewer pointed out that it seemed that everyone at Activision Blizzard was subject to constant scrutiny for the next few months.
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This is how Brad Smith answered: “I think we should all live in a world where we are under scrutiny”. Without mentioning it directly, Smith seems to be referring especially to all those people who have been involved in one way or another in the sexual harassment controversies within Activision Blizzard in recent times, allegedly including the CEO of the company. Bobby Kotick. Already at the time it was commented that Kotick would leave his position after the closing of the agreement and that it would be Phil Spencer himself who would assume his role.