Microsoft's big Xbox announcement last week turned out to be something of an anticlimax: just four games, none of them particularly earth-shattering, are making their way to PlayStation or Nintendo Switch in the near future. Microsoft is neither exiting the console market nor taking all its games multiplatform, as whipped-up rumour mongers had wildly speculated. And the (excellent value) Xbox Game Pass subscription service is remaining exclusive to Xbox and PC. Microsoft was already one of the biggest publishers on PlayStation, especially now that it owns both Bethesda and Activision-Blizzard: everything from Skyrim to Call of Duty to Minecraft is technically a Microsoft game. If Microsoft gaming chief Phil Spencer had announced that, say, last year's Starfield was headed to PlayStation 5, or Xbox head Sarah Bond had said that Microsoft was ditching the idea of Xbox-exclusive games altogether, well, that would have been a huge shift worthy of writing home about (or, in my case, writing to you about).

Microsoft's war chest is a dynamo. With revenues that rival the GDP of a small nation, it's got enough cash on hand to buy whatever it wants. When it does, it just acquires another money-making machine. Video game company Activision Blizzard, which Microsoft announced yesterday it was buying for a staggering $68.7 billion--more than the $26.2 billion it paid for LinkedIn in 2016, almost 10 times the $7.5 billion it paid for Bethesda's parent ZeniMax Media last year. Microsoft now owns Call of Duty and Halo; it owns The Elder Scrolls and World of Warcraft.

Shares in the Japanese conglomerate closed down 13% on Wednesday, their biggest fall since the global financial crisis in 2008, as investors reacted to the possibility that the $70bn bid for Activision Blizzard could result in hit games being pulled from the Sony PlayStation console and subscription service and offered exclusively on the rival Microsoft Xbox. The blockbuster deal is not only the largest Microsoft has struck but also the biggest ever in the gaming and tech sectors. It sparked a wave of investor interest in further consolidation, with shares in Electronic Arts, the maker of the Fifa football series, and Take-Two Interactive, the maker of Grand Theft Auto, rising. The shares of other video games companies also rose. France's Ubisoft, which makes Assassin's Creed, was up almost 12%, while Japan's Capcom and Square Enix each rose 3.5%. "Sony's response [to the deal] will be one to watch, of course," said Clay Griffin, an analyst at the research firm MoffettNathanson.

Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below.This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text. Welcome back to Talking Tech. This month marks a huge milestone for Microsoft and its Xbox video game console. Twenty-years ago, this month, Microsoft launched the original Xbox.

Xbox has a more complex and difficult argument to make. "It's got a great ecosystem" isn't exactly a great sales pitch in a crowded GameStop. But Game Pass already has 10 million subscribers, a solid, loyal foundation for any developing online community. And its xCloud service, which will allow Xbox and Windows players to access their games anywhere via a smartphone or tablet, is already proving to be a robust, stable experience even in its current testing stage. For the moment, Sony has no counterargument.

It's been a bit since we had a good console war. The definition of what makes a games console seems more fluid than ever, but the gaming industry still has a penchance for entering into the sort of old school, Nintendo vs. Sega-style throwdowns that have characterized the space for decades. For most, this means the big two: Microsoft with the Xbox, Sony with the Playstation. Nintendo has for a long time been sort of dancing around the periphery, making weird decisions about living room consoles and owning portables hands down. This year, however, that distinction disappears as Nintendo prepares to release the Switch, a hybrid living room/portable console that could never come from any other company.