That came to light when Microsoft officials announced last week that they would buy game studio Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion.

The American software giant will thus now have a number of big names in the gaming world – at least Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Diablo, Candy Crush, Tony Hawk, Diablo, Overwatch, Spyro, Hearthstone, Guitar Hero, Crash Bandicoot and BintangCraft.

“We’re working hard on world-class content, community and cloud to usher in a new era of gaming that puts players and creators first,” said Microsoft’s head of acquisitions Satya Nadella.

He added that the American company plans to return to the virtual universe. “Games are currently the most dynamic and engaging category of entertainment across all platforms and will play a key role in the development of the platform metaverse,” said Nadella.

But he did not want to reveal more details about the plans with the metaverse.

Epic Games has been working on a new virtual world for product and game presentations since last year.

Meta will also be trying to be successful with its own metaverse, as its founder Mark Zuckerberg revealed before last summer’s vacation. In the fall, the company gave the entire plan a more realistic outline. It will gradually seek to employ 10,000 people in Europe who will work to create a virtual universe over the next ten to 15 years.

Microsoft will pay $68.7 billion (about $1.5 trillion) to Activision Blizzard. After successfully completing the entire deal, the American software giant should become the third largest gaming company in the world, at least in terms of sales. It ranks close behind Tencent and Sony. But the trade has not been approved by regulators.