Activision buys 'Candy Crush' developer King for $5.9 billion
Say what you will about the quality of Activision's output, but the company makes incredibly smart business moves. Like the announcement that it purchased Candy Crush studio King Digital Entertainment for a cool $5.9 billion. For comparison's sake, Amazon paid a paltry $970 million for Twitch while Facebook spent $2 billion on Oculus VR and $19 billion on messaging platform Whatsapp. Oh, and Minecraft only set Microsoft back $2.5 billion. Bobby Kotick and Co. definitely think this is a big deal, and considering just how many people play the mindless puzzler this is likely a smart investment.
Think about it this way, now Activision Blizzard has the entire spectrum of gamers covered: Kids and families with the Skylanders series, World of Warcraft lifers, folks who casually play Hearthstone, the hardcore who continuously play Destiny and Call of Duty and of course, the gateway drug to in-app purchases, Candy Crush Saga. For brevity's sake, I even left out a bunch of other franchises that are cash cows (oh, hey there StarCraft)! That's one hell of a portfolio no matter how you look at it.
@drew quick, someone mock up an In-App Purchase option for "Entire Company $6b"
— Hunter Walk (@hunterwalk) November 3, 2015
Again, @DevolverDigital is available for a very reasonable $1 billion or best offer.
— Fork Parker (@ForkParker) November 3, 2015
[Image credit: AFP/Getty Images]
