I'm not a metaverse fan, having been scarred permanently by David Cunliffe's avatar in Second Life, the original alternate reality which is still puttering along with about a million users, and digital thingamajig trading with its own virtual currency, the Linden dollars.
It is worth noting though that gaming has been a huge driver for hardware and software since the beginning of personal computing.
Gaming is the almost universal drawcard for computing, be it personal devices or the cloud.
Microsoft's always been strong in that area from when it created the DirectX set of multimedia application programming interfaces to games and of course, the Xbox console.
PCs were boring business tools that couldn't even create 8-bit chiptunes or 16-bit loops but in the mid-90s companies like Nvidia started making graphics accelerators and Creative Technology devised Sound Blaster cards for audio.
That created a multi-billion dollar industry without which we'd not have a metaverse conversation today.
In the same vein, gaming hardware continues to evolve, like the Logitech G915 TKL keyboard I've had for a few months now, along with the G435 headset from the same company.
The G915 keyboard is wireless with a promised latency of just one millisecond, and is actually very nice to type on.
The keystroke feel comes from low-profile mechanical switches that can be had in three different types, Clicky, Tactile and Linear depending your preference; this is delightfully nerdy stuff, with the Tactile switches having a "discernible bump" in their stroke, a low 1.5 mm actuation distance, and total travel of 2.7 mm.
Some 60 gram force is required to depress the keys, which can be cheered up later as you whack hyper realistic monsters in Doom Eternal, ray traced with the Nvidia RTX card in my gaming PC.
A gaming specific keyboard adds to the fun, ditto the lightweight Bluetooth Logitech G435 with spatial sound so that you can hear whoever it is that's sneaking up behind you, moments before they open fire.
Very cool gear that my 11-year-old son has monopolised and I had to ask very nicely to try it out.
Looking at how much the Logitech keyboard and headset cost, $399 and $249 respectively, it's clear that gamers have deep pockets.
In there lies the answer to how Microsoft will seek a return on its over $100b investment: by pitching games to rent through subscriptions to its 1.3 billion Windows (which also costs money) users, and hundred million Xbox (also an additional cost) gamers.
Gaming-as-a-service doesn't come cheap, ditto the few titles left on the market for standalone purchase.
Whether future revenue will be enough to recoup the cost of Activision Blizzard remains to be seen.
The past can be a poor guide to the future, but in 2014, Microsoft snapped up Minecraft, which is kind of a metaverse, for US$2.5b ($3.7b). This was approximately 20 times Minecraft's earnings.
There were howls of disbelief at that sum, but Minecraft brings in around half a billion US dollars a year now, from its 131 million users and Microsoft is estimated to have made US$3b in selling the game alone.
Activision Blizzard's latest annual report showed annual revenue of just over US$9b, giving a price per earnings ratio of around 8.5.
Provided Microsoft's able to keep Activision Blizzard trucking along while cleaning up the corporate culture at the games house, it might have just scored another lucrative headshot.
