On Tuesday tech giant Microsoft announced its proposed purchase of gaming company Activision Blizzard for nearly $69 billion. The deal would grant Microsoft ownership over globally recognized franchises like Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, and Candy Crush, to name a few. It also creates a new division in the company, Microsoft Gaming, to be led by the company's head of its Xbox division, Phil Spencer. For Activision Blizzard, this couldn't have come at a better time. The company, run by CEO Bobby Kotick since 1991, has been the subject of scrutiny and lawsuits based on numerous allegations of discrimination, sexual harassment, and a toxic workplace culture at the company.

Video highlights from Village & Pillage, the latest update to popular video game'Minecraft.' Mojang/Microsoft "Minecraft" may be one of the best-selling games of all time – with more than 154 million copies purchased to date – but the developers haven't stopped building more into the game. Acquired by Microsoft in 2014, developer Mojang has just launched Village & Pillage, a free update that adds a plethora of new goodies to "Minecraft," for both the Java and Bedrock versions of game, which includes Windows PC ($26.95 and $26.99 for PC and Macintosh), mobile (iOS and Android, $6.99), Xbox One ($19.99) and Nintendo Switch ($29.99), and virtual reality platforms. Before we get into what's new and newsworthy in this new update, take in these additional facts about the world-renowned building simulation, released ten years ago this month: more people are playing "Minecraft" than ever before at about 91 million unique players every month (across all platforms); more than 160 million people have watched more than 5 billion hours of Minecraft video content on YouTube; and not only is "Minecraft" one of the best-selling games in history, but also one of the highest-rated, with the PC version netting a 93% average "metascore" at Metacritic.com. 'Minecraft Earth': New mobile game to offer AR experience like'Pokemon Go' As the name suggests, villages have changed quite a bit and are among the highlights in this latest'Minecraft' update. Visually, villages will look different based on biome, or region – plains, desert, savannah, taiga, and so forth – therefore you can expect to see changes based on climate and local resources.

State of Decay was the best-selling game of May, 2018. Xbox One had the best-selling video game of May, 2018 while Sony won out in hardware sales. Overall, May was a strong month for video game hardware, with Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo achieving all-time record sales for the month. Spending across all categories increased 13% over last year to $685 million. Hardware and accessory growth offset a downturn in software sales.

God of War was the best-selling video game of April. God Of War topped video game sales charts in April of 2018, surprising no one. Meanwhile, the PlayStation 4 was the best-selling video game console. Once again, Sony had a very good month. Overall video game spending on hardware, software, accessories and game cards grew by 18% in April over a year ago, reaching $823 million.

If you have friends who own video game consoles, chances are you heard a lot about Destiny 2 in the last month. But anecdotal evidence that the game was everywhere just got backed up by some astonishing sales figures. Just one month after launching on PS4 and Xbox One, Destiny 2 is already the best-selling game of 2017, according to an NPD Group report -- which was released a day before the game comes out on PC. Those numbers also make it the third-best-selling game of the last 12 months, behind Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare (out in September 2016) and Battlefield 1 (released October 2016). Who knows when Destiny 2 will pull ahead of those in sales, but the hotly-anticipated PC version -- plus the first DLC, which may come out in December -- will certainly keep the cash train rolling.