GamesBeat: Why do the deal? Why is this a good time to sell? And why is it a good price as well?

Bobby Kotick: The most important is — it’s funny, you and I were talking about AI last time — as you look at the increased competition between Tencent, and NetEase, and Sony, and now you have Google and Amazon, and Apple, and Facebook, and Microsoft and Netflix. We were looking at over the course of the next couple of years, and starting to realize that we need thousands of people to be able to execute against our production plans. We need them in disciplines like AI and machine learning, or in data analytics, or in purpose-built cloud and cybersecurity — and that we just don’t have. And that competition for that talent is expensive, and really hard to come by.

And so, as we’re starting to think about all these skills that we need, that we don’t have and that were really necessary, we realized that we should be thinking about ways to get that talent. This was an acknowledgement and recognition. And then Satya [Nadella, CEO of Microsoft] and Phil [Spencer, head of gaming at Microsoft] and I have had conversations over many, many years of bigger things that we could do together.

And so when Phil called, it happened to be at a time where we were getting ready to start our long range planning process, and realizing that these were going to be issues and challenges. We had the discussion. Phil and I know each other well, and we have a great relationship, and the company has a great relationship. And when you start to think about all the skills we need, all the resources we need, and what they have, it made a lot of sense. When they originally called, we said we would we think about it, and then they made this offer that was incredibly attractive at 45% premium over the stock price. And I think it just made a lot of sense. And so, the more we spent the time talking about how it would work, and what would happen, what resources were available, they clearly were the best partner.