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.
With all that said, here’s my best shot at assessing every gaming franchise Microsoft now owns (probably).
Activision/Blizzard
- 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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