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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.'"
Not too often the summary itself IS the dupe...
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
Both companies do little else other than release sequel after sequel for once popular series. Most of their original titles were released in the 90s.
I can't wait to start buying their games and various swag -- all emblazoned with the new Blactavision logos!
World of Command and Conquer?
"Live as if you'll die tomorrow." Ridiculous. You could die later today.
Provides some details. From their front page:
I screamed.
How long until I can play some crazy rhythm-based RTS with my guitar hero controller?
Why are the amounts quoted in Barbadian dollars?
As long as Starcraft 2 is still going to be released, this is fine with me.
No one makes games with great replay value like Blizzard does. Blizzard's strategy of not releasing a game until its ready is almost unheard of in this industry. I seriously hope that the new overlords don't mess with this - I'd hate to stop benefiting from Blizzard's good work.
It's not Blizzard that is merging: They've been part of Vivendi universal for years. Their parent company has many developers other developers outside of Blizzard. WoW is their cash cow though.
That said, it doesn't seem like their different developer studios have a lot of synergy though: The end result is a company that has very diverse offerings, and will be difficult to market as a single entity. It's not like either company needed the other for stability purposes though: Both WoW and Guitar Hero are the kind of franchises that allow a company to have a nice R&D budget and take risks with new franchises.
So I guess the merger will just mean they'll be able to push retailers around more easily, and make their revenue even more predictable.
Call of Duty 5, Azeroth Edition-
"{crackle} SGT Hulka, bring up your platoon of Orcs and get a crossfire on those Dwarves STAT!"
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.
"Blactavision" makes me think of "Blacula". But silly as that (and my suggestion) sounds, it's better than "Activision Blizzard". What were they thinking? They may as well have called themselves "No Imagination Games Corp."
-Keeping Activision (on its own) would have been cool for the nostalgia factor.
-Keeping Blizzard (on its own) would have been cool for the currently-successful factor
-If they couldn't decide, they should have just gotten a new name altogether. Maybe they could have sold themselves as a bridge between the gaming industry and general media distributors and called themselves gPod. Or maybe Gune...
The CB App. What's your 20?
To make money.
Put Blizzard employees in all management spots. Call me naive, but I think with them in charge it would keep a certain level of quality in the company that us fans like so much.
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
Activision Blizzard? That's the best name they could come up with?
If they wanted to depend on brand name recognition, they should have simply called themselves "The Creators of WOW & Call of Duty".
Blizzard has long been a 'Release it when its done' company--and the resulting products have almost always been very polished. Activision(at least in the past 15 years), has been willing to push crap out to market. With Activision's CEO taking over the merged company, can we expect anything -but- a quality drop in Blizzard's future products?
Whack a Catgirl: You know you want to!
I think this is the real news:
Vivendi, owner of the Universal Music Group -- world's largest music publisher, buys a controlling stake in Activision, maker of Guitar Hero -- the world's most popular music-based game franchise.
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.
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.
As someone who mostly associates the name "Activision" with old titles, the first thing that popped in my head when I read this was... "Massively Multiplayer Pitfall!"
They say it'll be a buyer's market with the dollar tanking over the next year.
Dear Zonk,
You shouldn't repeat yourself in your summary, it makes the summary redundant. It's like when you say something twice and it becomes redundant.
"Women are just like ninjas; They lie even when it is more convenient to tell the truth." ~ Unknown
Finally, I'll be able to stop playing WoW! It's so addictive now, but I'm sure Activision will somehow find a way to fuck it up so that it won't be fun, and I'll finally be able to quit.
Thanks, Activision! (Thactivision.)
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
I wonder if we can now trade our Warcraft Gold for new Songs for Guitar Hero III on sites like mmoExchange.com or GamerTex.com
They could have been bought by EA instead. Count your blessings.
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.