Activision Blizzard wanted to acquire Time Warner, says Bobby Kotick

Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick has revealed that the company wanted to acquire Time Warner at one point.

In an interview with Variety, Kotick said the Call of Duty maker was ready to swoop in and make a bid for Time Warner if AT&T had been unable to complete its $85.4 billion acquisition of the media and entertainment company.

But despite significant opposition from the US government due to antitrust concerns, the deal eventually went through in 2018, scuppering Activision’s plans.

“We’d take their IP and turn it into games. They’d take our IP and turn it into film and television, and we’d have an extraordinary company,” Kotick said.

“We raised all the capital and were ready to go in the event that AT&T couldn’t get the deal done.”

Time Warner successor Warner Bros. Discovery has recently enjoyed notable success in the games business, with Hogwarts Legacy becoming its fifth $1 billion-plus gaming franchise.

Microsoft is currently in the process of attempting to acquire Activision Blizzard in a $69 billion deal, which would be the industry’s largest ever by far.

The controversial merger has been cleared in almost 40 countries, including the European Union and most recently in South Korea.

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However, in April the UK’s Competition and Market Authority said it was preventing the deal due to concerns about its impact on the cloud gaming market. Microsoft is appealing against the decision and its case will be heard in court in July.

The Xbox maker is also facing a legal challenge in the US, where the Federal Trade Commission has sued Microsoft in a bid to block the acquisition over competition concerns.