Every Franchise Xbox Now Owns After Buying Activision
On October 13, Microsoft completed its nearly two-year-long process of consuming Activision Blizzard King. And while it will take months and years for Xbox and all the parties involved to sort everything out and start bringing past Activision Blizzard games to Game Pass, for now, we can tally up everything Microsoft seemingly now owns.
To put together this list I dug around a few different places and double-checked some franchises to confirm who owns what. In some cases I wasn’t able to figure out a decisive answer, so I left those out. I also avoided adding every single game these companies have published, as some were one-offs that have never been touched since and that don’t feel like a “franchise.” Finally, just because Activision or other companies previously published an X-Men or ESPN-branded game doesn’t mean the publisher owns that brand or even that specific game. So those aren’t on here, either.
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3D Ultra Pinball
Call of Duty
Call to Power
Crash Bandicoot
Dark Reign
Diablo
Extreme PaintBrawl
Front Page Sports Baseball
Gabriel Knight
Geometry Wars
Guitar Hero
Gun
Hearthstone
Heavy Gear
Heretic
Heroes of the Storm
Hexen
Interstate ‘76
King’s Quest
Laura Bow Mystery Series
Lost Vikings, The
Matt Hoffman’s Pro BMX
Overwatch
Phantasmagoria
Pitfall
Police Quest
Prototype
Quest for Glory
SWAT
Singularity
Skylanders
Soldier of Fortune
Space Quest
Spyro
StarCraft
Tenchu (only the games released before Activision sold the rights to From Software in 2004)
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater
True Crime
Ultimate Soccer Manager
Warcraft
World of Warcraft
Zork
King
AlphaBetty Saga
Blossom Blast Saga
Bubble Saga
Bubble Witch Saga
Candy Crush Saga
Diamond Digger Saga
Farm Heroes Saga
Hoop de Loop Saga
Papa Pear Saga
Paradise Bay
Pepper Panic Saga
Pet Rescue Saga
Pyramid Solitaire Saga
Rebel Riders
Scrubby Dubby Saga
Shuffle Cats
Bethesda / Zenimax
Commander Keen
Deathloop
Dishonored
Doom
Elder Scrolls
Fallout
Hi-Fi Rush
Prey
Quake
Rage
Redfall
Starfield
The Evil Within
Wolfenstein
Xbox / Microsoft
Age of Empires
Age of Mythology
Banjo-Kazooie
Bard’s Tale, The
Battletoads
Blinx: The Time Sweeper
Blue Dragon
Conker
Costume Quest
Crackdown
Crimson Skies
Fable
Forza
Gears of War
Halo
Killer Instinct
Kinect Sports
Microsoft Flight Simulator
Midtown Madness
Minecraft
Perfect Dark
Pillars of Eternity
Project Gotham Racing
Psychonauts
R.C. Pro-Am
Rise of Nations
Sabreman
State of Decay
Thunder (Hydro Thunder, Arctic Thunder, etc.)
Viva Pinata
Wasteland
Zoo Tycoon
And consider this fun challenge while you take it all in: Try not to think about how sad it is that so few corporations now own so much of our pop culture. Let me tell you, I failed! But at least Call of Duty will be free on Game Pass in the future, right?
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