Sony Stock Reportedly Took a $20 Billion Hit After Xbox’s Activision Announcement

Sony’s stock reportedly took a $20 billion dollar hit after Xbox announced that it is set to acquire Activision Blizzard.

As detailed in a report by Bloomberg, Sony Group Corp. shares reportedly fell by 13% in Tokyo on Wednesday – just a day after Microsoft announced its $68.7 billion deal with Activision Blizzard. As per the report, the drop itself is the largest single fall in Sony stock since October 2008.

The acquisition will bring a wide range of new franchises into Xbox’s domain including the likes of Call of Duty, Overwatch, Diablo, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, Warcraft, and much more. In comparison, last year Xbox announced that it had acquired ZeniMax, the parent company of Bethesda, for a deal worth $7.5 Billion. With the company’s latest takeover offering a ludicrous number of high-profile IPs, it’s no surprise that the price on the deal dwarves its earlier acquisitions by a vast margin and has seemingly resulted in Sony’s stock taking a hit.

Over recent years, Sony and Xbox have both taken different approaches to encourage players to purchase their latest consoles. While PlayStation has seen great success by offering a number of exclusive IPs and titles such as Insomniac’s Spider-Man, Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us, and Guerrilla’s Horizon Zero Dawn, Xbox has instead opted down its subscription service, Game Pass, as a way to bring additional players into the fold.

While last year Game Pass subscriptions were reported to have slowed down, a recent statement from Xbox Boss Phil Spencer explained that the service has now reached over 25 million subscribers. The announcement came paired with the news that Microsoft would offer “as many Activision Blizzard games as we can within Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass” once the acquisition had been complete – a move that’s sure to increase its subscriber count by even more.

At present, it’s unclear exactly which Activision Blizzard games Xbox plans to make exclusive to its consoles and which will still be available for PlayStation customers. However, given that Bethesda’s upcoming release of Starfield is set to launch as an Xbox first-party exclusive, it feels likely that PlayStation fans could be set to lose out on at least some releases in the future.

For more news surrounding Xbox’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, make sure to check out this article detailing how the latter once reportedly considered buying video game media outlets Kotaku and PC Gamer in a bid to change public opinion of the company.

Jared Moore is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.