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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.'"
How is the WoW community going to take it?
... alot.
I think it really matters whether the game developers are going to be replaced by Activision or not, as a decrease in quality might spark some anger.
Especially since their number of players are
How long until I can play some crazy rhythm-based RTS with my guitar hero controller?
No wonder their stock has been climbing lately. I have made so much money day-trading them. I guess it's time to go short now that all the sheeple will want some... I'll sell you some on Monday afternoon.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Many news-sites are actually reporting this as a merger between Vivendi and Activision (perhaps more of a semantic distinction, but it does serve to remind that Blizzard is owned by someone, and is not an independant self-owned development studio, in the strictly on-paper sense).
:P
This is a fascinating move for one very important reason: EA. This merger combines a hugely profitable juggernaut of game-making (Blizzard) with what is probably the largest publisher out there (Activision). Electronic Arts suddenly got not only competition, but may have just dropped into second place, all in one fell swoop.
This is a great move for Blizzard: there is no other development company that is such a proven success, having long passed the point of "one hit wonder" or "a lucky run," and they now have access to, in light of how bankable they are, absolutely vast wodges of capital for their future plans. This is an awesome move for Activision: a publisher (with some developer in there too) that has quietly grown over the last decade to become one of the largest now has pretty much the ultimate triple-A development juggernaut at its core. This last bit is a key point, as it reflects EA. EA is large publisher wrapped around a large and important development house. Vivendi and Activision have now stepped up to that level and type of operation, and can be expected to give EA a run for its money.
What particularly pleases me is how this could be seen as providing a "good guys" team to stand against EA's often-percieved "bad guys" team, which should be an interesting public dynamic to watch
if this is true, how can:
Also be true? Either nothing is changing or something is, you can't have it both ways. The reason for mergers and aquisitions is generally that the companies involved believe that through the merger some gains can be made. The way that history proves works is through reductions is redundancy. (call these layoffs, retrenchments, rightsizing, as your personal tastes dictate) The other not-so-successful-historically model is the "merge two companies with no redundancies, run them together and lose money" model (ref: AOL-Time-Warner among others) They now have ~twice the advertising clout and a bigger stick to negotiate with retailers. ie. Stock or we will only have limited quantities of SC2 and COD5 for you.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Or maybe... 1bn + 2bn = 18.8bn.
The way I see it, Activision must have had some super cool idea for the next major online cash cow err game. But, Activision must have determined that they lacked the resources to complete this epic production on their own. So, they carefully weigh their options of ways to raise the extra 2bn they estimate is needed to complete the project. Stock offering, venture capitalists... apparently they decided that their best option was to merge with another larger gaming company.
There's no reason why this new 3bn project should interfere with the day to day operations of the other 15.8bn of whatever makes up the total merger. I can't wait to find out exactly what this new 3bn project is.
If Blizzard is doing something right its not uptime.
Most people who deliver online services like to measure their uptime in 'nines'.
Blizzard measure theirs in 'eights'.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Well, like you said, both Blizzard and Activision are businesses, and businesses exist to make money that they can return to their owners and shareholders. Both Blizzard and Activision don't make games just because it's fun to. They make games because people will pay money for them.
I actually think this will help gamers. First off, Vivendi will basically retain control of Activision Blizzard by bieng the majority shareholder and having the majority of seats on the board. This will allow them to protect Blizzard's independent operation status, something it has always had as a subsidiary of Vivendi, and something that has clearly worked in past given the quality and profitability of the titles and franchises Blizzard has created. Blizzard is probably set for the longterm with this deal.
Activision fans also benefit, at least in the short term, because it will get access to Universal Music Groups song catalog through Vivendi. This will translate into more, and better Guitar Hero sequels, which will benefit Guitar Hero fans. Of course, the problem with Guitar Hero is that it is an inherently faddish game, ala DDR, and its novelty will probably wear off in a year. Then Activision will have to depend on its Call of Duty, Tony Hawk, and Quake franchises, all of which are oversaturated. However, that would have happened to Activision regardless of the merger, so I fail to see how gamers are hurt by this merger.
The sun beams down on a brand new day, No more welfare tax to pay, Unsightly slums gone up in flashing light...
As funny as that is, it raises an interesting prospect: The Warcraft lore and brand are immensely popular and well developed. At the same time, everyone got tired of seeing *yet.another.WWII.shooter* but the "modern" war shooters aren't fundamentally that different.
If they could work together to make some sort of Warcraft themed massively multi-player FPS, I'd be on that like stink on poo. Different classes that are *actually* different, instead of just one guy having a bigger gun and more ammo. It would be hard to balance since it would probably play quite differently than the current WWII formula, but it would be sweet.
"Cheeze it!" - Bender
I just thought of this new class for WoW: Bard.
You plug in your Guitar and cast spells/do attacks by playing a riff.
Can't wait to roll up Lemmy the Orc Bard... or maybe an undead Eddie.