From Tony Hawk to Microsoft Acquisition: The Bobby Kotick Story

In 2020, when President Trump signed the executive order that would ban TikTok in the U.S., Bobby Kotick called his old friend Steven Mnuchin. The former Secretary of the Treasury told him that, if TikTok’s U.S. operations were to be sold to an American company, Microsoft would be the only bidder. A couple calls later, he reached ByteDance founder and CEO Zhang Yiming, who said he’d rather sell to Bobby than Microsoft. Concerned about his ability to get the deal done solo, Bobby called Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and offered to make a joint bid. Nadella declined, but added, “ if the deal doesn't get done, we should sit down and talk about us buying Activision.” TikTok currently remains Chinese-owned, but three years later, Microsoft paid $75 billion for Activision Blizzard. 00:00:00 Introduction 00:01:23 Forming Activision Blizzard 00:05:11 Good acquisitions 00:11:01 Electronic Arts and “Schedule C” 00:17:30 Nintendo and Mediagenic 00:24:08 Steve Wynn 00:32:24 Wynn cashes out 00:38:25 Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 00:44:06 Blizzard's many sales 00:48:37 World of Warcraft and Call of Duty 00:52:03 Jurassic Park 00:55:03 Chris Metzen 00:59:59 David Geffen 01:03:23 New competitors 01:07:50 The harassment lawsuits 01:12:40 Trying to buy TikTok 01:14:42 Hardware design 01:19:04 Polymarket, Donald Trump, and TikTok 01:21:47 The Call of Duty Endowment 01:25:18 Brian Stann and Hire Heroes USA 01:29:01 Steve Jobs and Pixar 01:37:30 The first Macintosh 01:39:25 The Wii demo 01:42:03 Nintendo 64, PlayStation and VR 01:46:39 The hardest year 01:49:52 Working with Brian Kelly 01:51:10 Satya Nadella and Microsoft 01:54:38 Xbox Game Pass 02:00:32 What “grit” means to Bobby 02:02:09 Outro