Only reason activision went to those other companies was to drive up the price and start a bidding war. I wouldnt be surprised if more news comes out that they also went to google,amazon,etc
I assume Kotick wanted to have a golden retirement so wanted to sell it, so made a tour to see who was interested on it and who was the biggest bidder. If he called FB and EA to see if they wanted it instead of selling it to MS, pretty likely he also did call Tencent, Take 2, Amazon and Google.
We know FB and EA weren't interested on it, but if MS paid 30% more than it was worth I assume there was mininum another interested one. I'd bet Take 2 wasn't interested, and it would have been a merger so wouldn't have raised the bid. I bet the other one interested was Tencent or Amazon.
But Phil decided to pay a premium to reevaluate their relationship with Kotick, maybe even after trying to lower the price by leaking the issues at ABK and raising the flames via their friend J. Shredder and similar who welcomed any clickbait and virtue signaling.
No one has the wallet that Microsoft has.
If interested on it Tencent, FB, Amazon, Apple, Google or even some else could have paid $70B. Or slightly less, because MS paid an extra 30%. Or people like EA, Take 2, Ubi, Embracer etc could have been merged with them.
But unlike MS, at least EA and FB weren't interested on them.