Blizzard and Activision Announce $18.8bn Merger

Ebon Praetor writes "The BBC reports that Blizzard and Activision have announced an $18.8bn merger. Activision's CEO, Bobby Kotick, will become the head of the joint company, while Vivendi, Blizzard's current parent company, will become the largest single investor in the new group. Even with the size of the merger, the combined company will still be smaller than the industry giant EA. 'As part of the merger plan, Blizzard will invest $2bn in the new company, while Activision is putting up $1bn. The merged business will be called Activision Blizzard ... Vivendi will be the biggest shareholder in the group.'"

Comments

Might as well sell Bliz to McDonalds

[billcopc]

I hate to say it, but Blizzard has officially become a big faceless game shop. Activision has been a big faceless publisher for decades now. It's a match made in corporate heaven, as both companies have the same goals and low standards to make it work.

For me at least, Activision has become synonymous with "sell-out". They buy all the cool game houses, then push inferior games out at a ludicrous pace. The Activision brand has never meant anything to gamers, they're just the Wal-Mart of video games.

Blizzard, *chuckles* they let WoW's success go to their head. Where the hell is Starcraft 2 or Warcraft 4 ? Diablo 3 ? They have all these massive franchises that are sitting around getting old, and now they even have Bill Shatner trying to sell their 3 year old MMO. I've played the damn game, I've seen what there was to see. Give me WoW 2 already!

Two bullshit companies merging to form one big bullshit. Woop-tee-doo!