Bobby Kotick leaves Activision at the end of the year

The Activision boss Bobby Kotick started leading the company back in 1991, and to illustrate how long ago that was in the video game industry, Super Nintendo was lunched in Europe in 1992...

But all things must come to an end, and as Microsoft has now made Activision Blizzard a part of Xbox Game Studios, Kotick has revealed that he will leave the company by the end of the year, almost 33 years after he became the boss. It's still not clear who will replace Kotick, but he writes in an open letter:

"I have long said that I am fully committed to helping with the transition. Phil has asked me to stay on as CEO of ABK, reporting to him, and we have agreed that I will do that through the end of 2023. We both look forward to working together on a smooth integration for our teams and players."

Kotick also writes what it means for Activision Blizzard to be a part of Microsoft:

"Combining with Microsoft will bring new resources and new opportunities to our extraordinary teams worldwide. It will also enable us to deliver more fun, more joy, and more connection to more players than ever before."

As the leader of the company, Kotick has been a controversial figure known to prefer a few very big franchises and seldom take risks or invest in smaller and more uncertain projects. This has more or less transformed Activision into a Call of Duty factory, and many think Blizzard's games lost quality after they merged with Activision. There has also been a lot of complaints about unfair labour practices, accusations of discrimination and other things that people don't think Kotick handled in a good way.

Having a new leader after 33 years for the biggest third party video game publisher in the world (second if you count Tencent as third party), which is now first party, is of course an enormous change and it'll be interesting to see what this means for the future.

What do you think the next Activision Blizzard boss should do on his/her first day on the job?