Before we get to our note on existing home sales later this morning, we want to catch up on some news makers from Monday and provide our company-specific updates.
Microsoft (MSFT) made a splash Monday morning and quickly moved on from its failed attempt to acquire TikTok's U.S. operations when they announced they have acquired the privately held video game publisher ZeniMax Media for $7.5 billion in cash. ZeniMax Media is the parent company of Bethesda Softworks, which is known for its popular video game franchises The Elder Scrolls and Fallout, among others. For Microsoft, this is the largest deal it has made in the past two years and the first one of significance in the gaming industry since it acquired Minecraft in 2015.
From a strategic standpoint, the deal will increase the number of creative studio teams under Microsoft from 15 to 23 and will bring Bethesda's iconic franchises to the fast-growing Xbox Game Pass, Microsoft's new cloud-gaming subscription service which currently has 15 million subscribers, up from 10 million in April. We like this deal for Microsoft because of its commitment to developing compelling and entertaining content is what could separate the company from other competing cloud-based gaming services such as Google Stadia, in what is expected to be an ongoing battle for market share in a higher-margin, recurring revenue stream business within the gaming industry. We said last week on our members-only conference call (watch the replay here) that $190 was the level we would look to upgrade MSFT, but our current inclination is to have a quicker trigger on the next pullback due to the market-wide admiration for this deal.
And if Microsoft is willing to shell out $7.5 billion for ZeniMax, we wonder what the takeout price would be for Take-Two Interactive Software (TTWO) , a larger hit-maker with blockbuster franchises and a current market cap value below $20 billion. To be clear, we do not think Take-Two Interactive is up for sale, but if anything, the ZeniMax price underscores the value of the video game publisher industry and the strategic role they play to the long-term positioning of the larger technology players, especially ahead of this fall's hardware console cycle -- the first one in over five years. This could explain why the strong price action in TTWO Monday, though the stock is giving back some of its gains in early trading Tuesday.
Elsewhere, Seattle Genetics (SGEN) was back in the news Monday afternoon at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Virtual Congress 2020 where the company and Genmab (GMAB) presented data from the innovaTV 204 pivotal phase 2, single-arm clinical trial evaluating tisotumab vedotin (TV) as monotherapy in patients with previously treated recurrent and/or metastatic cervical cancer. This presentation comes as a follow-up to the positive Phase 2 top-line readout that was announced back in June we previously wrote about in our Alert here.
The short of it is that we should see Seattle Genetics submit a Biologics License Application to support an accelerated approval, paving the way for the company to have its fourth commercial asset. And number five could quickly move through the pipeline thanks to the joint partnership between Seattle Genetics and Merck (MRK) to develop ladiratuzumab vedotin, which is part of its exciting broader strategic collaboration announcement from last week that validated the Seattle Genetics platform. You can read all about that here. We thought SGEN would have reacted more positively to yesterday's presentation at ESMO, but the stock has been a great winner of late and perhaps that has played a role in the muted response.