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

Here's an FAQ from Blizzard

[Jon.Laslow]

http://blizzard.com/press/activision-faq.shtml

Provides some details. From their front page:

Blizzard to Join Forces With Activision
We're pleased to announce that along with the other companies that make up Vivendi Games, we are merging with Activision to form a new global entertainment organization called Activision Blizzard (pending shareholder and regulatory approval). Similar to our previous arrangement, Blizzard Entertainment will now operate as a division of this new organization.

There will be no changes to our games, our websites, our personnel, or our day-to-day operations as a result of the deal. However, this combining of resources will benefit all of the companies involved and will further strengthen Blizzard's ability to continue delivering high-quality content for our players around the world for many years to come.

Re:New MMORPG

[Valacosa]

Damn - upon further research, I find that it was EA that bought Westwood, not Activision. Now I feel really stupid.

It's too bad too. Imagine how awesome it would be to have a game where orcs could be pwned by an Obelisk of Light.

I think there is something afoot.

[Anachragnome]

I have been keeping an eye on the hiring page for Blizzard for awhile and they have been hiring for a "top secret" project(their words)for quite some time. http://www.blizzard.com/jobopp/
(Look on the upper right side of page)

I have been making potshot guesses regarding what they are up to.

This changes those guesses. It may boil down to simple licensing issues. Activison has something Blizzard needs and is willing to pay for it? A merger here would put a lot of those licensing issues out of the purview of most people, allowing them to do so without blowing their cover. Thats a wild guess though.

The thing that puzzles me the most is that ACTIVISIONS current CEO will be running the ship. Granted, that may have been a concession on the part of Vivendi, but it sure looks to me like Blizzard/Vivendi has the majority of the chips on the table. Which, again, leads me to believe that Vivendi wants something from Activision and that was the only way to get it.

Re:(Shudder...)

[Hexedian]

By MMO standards, World of Warcraft was a finished product. You only need to look at other games, like Anarchy Online, or, more recently, Tabula Rasa (Which was so incomplete upon release that they thought it a good idea to start numbering their patch from 0.1 onward), to see that a game that is fully HALF complete really IS a good deal.

Re:EA is no longer alone at the top.

[fm6]

Many news-sites are actually reporting this as a merger between Vivendi and Activision (perhaps more of a semantic distinction

That's like saying there's a "semantic" distinction between fruit and fruit trees. Vivendi owns several media and telecom businesses. (In fact, they used to be a major player in the media world, with movie studios, cable networks, and more. But that's another story.) Not only will this new company be a small part of Vivendi's operation, but Vivendi will share ownership with Activision's former stockholders.

Re:World Of Warcraft

[ZombieRoboNinja]

Actually, if you look at the Gamasutra summary, it's Blizzard (well, Vivendi) buying out Activision. Vivendi gets 52% of the stock of the merged company and 6 of 11 seats on the board.

Re:World Of Warcraft

[ZombieRoboNinja]

Erm, which I suppose I should link.

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=16457

Re:Starcraft II ramifications

[Cyberllama]

I can afford the karma hit so I'm gonna say it like it is:

Blizzard hasn't been a "release it only when it's done" company since Warcraft 3: TFT. I've Participated in the last 4 Blizzard betas, and there was a remarkable shift from Warcraft 3: RoC to Warcraft 3: TFT -- you almost couldn't even call TFT a beta test by comparison. It lasted maybe 2 months total? The game came out very incomplete -- missing an entire single player campaign from what had been promised -- but was slowly added in over the course of several balance patches (the game as also a joke of balance when it came out). Blizzard, to their credit, did do a good job with the final product -- it just took them a couple months worth of patches after release to get the job done.

I hate to be the one to break the bad news to you, but Blizzard has been a "patch it till it's done" company for a few years now, just like everyone else.

This actually works out well enough in the MMORPG setting since often they are able to patch in missing content and polish/fix other content before players even get to it -- since it takes players some time to burn though the lower-end content which tends to be the most polished/playtested.

I do give them credit for actually delaying TBC (thus causing it to miss it's initial November 30th release date which would have meant massive Christmas sales) and spending more time with it -- but they almost didn't have a choice there -- there was literally no content above level 67 at the time and 3 out of the 7 zones weren't even populated/open/quested/etc, not to mention none of the raid content was implemented yet.