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Bobby Kotick exits on December 29 and Microsoft details other management changes

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 6 min

Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick formally announced that December 29 will be his last day at Microsoft Gaming after decades of running Activision and Activision Blizzard.

Microsoft bought Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion on October 13, 20 months after announcing the deal that led to a tangle with regulators over antitrust concerns. Kotick and Brian Kelly bought a 25% stake in the near-bankrupt Activision (then Mediagenic) in 1990. In 1991, Kotick became CEO and they changed the name back to Activision and restructured it. Over the years, Kotick built it into the largest third-party publisher of games.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.