What every new partner wants to hear. "I settled for you".
I can't see how ActiBliz would have been anyone's first choice.
It has Call of Duty and King, so ok there are bright spots there worth chasing. Blizzard keeps trying to open up eSports - it hasn't quite done it yet, but it keeps trying - so if that actually becomes a thing, you'd be there, but I'd say it's not there yet.
That said, all the controversy around Kotik was a big albatross around that deal, and he was hardly alone as there have been a lot of "bad culture" stories come out of there -- some of it was probably fueled by "Me Too" - but in the realm of publicly traded stock, perception is more important than reality. Blizzard just got kicked out of China with their most profitable title there (World of Warcraft).
And it was a really high dollar acquisition without a lot of recent success - you are paying a premium for basically just the IP - a lot of the big IPs over there haven't had a blockbuster game in a really long time ("Show me the money")
Microsoft swallowed the entire package - hook, line and sinker - rather than trying to parcel out what they considered worthwhile (they always held up CoD as their example, and mentioned mobile aspirations, but they didn't just snipe those items out of the deal).
So yeah, I think this was probably the third or fourth girl they asked to the prom, and they were prepared to keep going down the list until someone finally said yes, no matter how ridiculous the offer was.
