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Blizzard-Activision Merger Official
The Washington Post's Mike Musgrove is reporting that the Blizzard-Activision merger is official as of yesterday afternoon. "One analyst has predicted that the merged company would make $1.38 billion in profits during its first financial year, enough to make Activision Blizzard the world's largest game publisher. [...] But this merger should give the newly-formed company enough heft to compete with EA for such blockbuster projects, said Pachter. 'It's good to have a duopoly instead of a monopoly,' he said. 'This just makes the industry that much more interesting.'"
What does this do to Diablo III? I hope they don't over commercialize their better blizzard offerings with in-game ads.
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
In other news, thumbscrews said to be preferable to the rack.
I sure hope Activision isn't stupid enough to mess around with the way Blizzard does things. Disney may be full of twats, but at least they knew better than to screw with Pixar after buying them. Let's hope that Activision has the same sense.
Riverablo.
Aww, Fuck.
There wasn't a monopoly. They came up with that line to try to appease the cynical young crowd.
I could only by games from EA? EA was somehow not allowing me to easily buy other games? EA is the only multi-billion dollar game company?
They only monopoly they ahve is on trademarked sport series.
NFL, NBA, etc. . .
And this merger will do nothing to stop that.
In 5-8 year BLizzard will lose there rep of releasing fnished high quality games. You'll see.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Just look at all the improvements Activision made to the Guitar Hero series after acquiring R.O. Ads... poor note charts... incredibly gimmicky additions to gameplay. I am very disapointed to hear of this merger.
Doesn't Blizzard bring in more than a billion in profits a year, by itself? What's Activision bringing to the table?
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Will all of Activision's games start to not suck or is it just from here on out?
Hahahaha, you fools! You thought you could defeat me, but you didn't count on my super warrior robot !
Blactivard! Destroy them!
isn't Blactivision already an old Blaxploitation movie from the 70s?
...are they going to call it Blahctivision or (my favourite) Actilizzard?
Too bad I just used my last mod point for the day. Hopefully there are some other people running around with points today that remember River Raid
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Where are the games of yore?
That captured you in an experience like never before,
and when completed, left you wanting for more?
Used to be that in box was a map made of cloth.
Nowadays when opened, out of the box comes a moth.
In a game like Command & Conquer, even the installation was a treat.
But now its all boring wizards. I guess the programmers just aren't that 1337.
Where are the games that are deep, like Zork and Chrono Trigger?
Now they all seem to be shallow and simple, but they are a lot bigger.
I loved playing with friends, in games like System Shock 2 (with patch)
But now its all against friends, seems like there's only deathmatch.
These games of old came with books that were a joy to read.
Now they won't even print it, they just put it on the CD.
The graphics weren't great, but they had a great story and they were immersive.
Nowadays you have to do it yourself for games that have multiplayer that's massive.
I want to go back to Monkey Island or command X-COM to save us from alien attacks.
And I'd like to thank Telltale Games for the fun revival of Sam and Max.
Oh how I yearn for the games of yore
That captured you in an experience like never before,
and when completed, left you wanting for more?
http://9xrnet.com/blog_gaming/where_are_the_games_of_yore
EA hasn't acquired some small company that it can now manipulate however it sees fit. These are both powerhouses. You can be sure that Blizzard doesn't want to see it's name tarnished and it certainly has the clout and financial backing to pull off the kind of negotiations it needed to during this merger. I suspect that Blizzard wants access to more high-end developers and Activision just wants some of the royalties of Blizzard's cash cow. If that's all that happens (and monthly subscription prices don't go up) I don't see this as a bad thing at all.
Activision has snagged, founded, or otherwise invested in a number of companies:
1997 - Raven Software
1998 - Pandemic Studios
1999 - Neversoft Entertainment
2000 - Gray Matter Interactive
2001 - Treyarch Invention LLC
2002 - Z-Axis Ltd, Luxoflux Corporation
2003 - Infinity Ward, Shaba Games LLC
2004 - Activision's 25th birthday- take one free acquisition. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.
2005 - Vicarious Visions, Toys for Bob, Beenox, Inc.
2006 - RedOctane, Inc.
2007 - Bizarre Creations
It's odd to me how studios gain/lose/change their identities through acquisitions. Toys for Bob was responsible for Star Control II, which remains one of my favorites to this day. More recently, they did a PS2 movie tie-in for Madagascar. I'm guessing that that game was solid, but not the tour de force that was SC2. On the other hand, Maxis is now "just" one of EA's brands, and they've always done stuff that interested me. Perhaps companies just need well-placed pied pipers (Wright; Jobs; Carmack) to retain their identities?
We're indie. We're working on our 14th game.
They made it sound like merging these two companies is somehow increasing the number of competitors in the market.
Previously, there were three big companies, EA, Activision, and Blizzard.* They were all competitors. Now, there are only two: EA and Activision-Blizzard. That does not benefit consumers. The already-existing cartel has just shrunk, moving even closer to a monopoly.
The benefits of capitalism (low prices, high quality, variety of choice, available jobs, economic health, etc...) all come to fruition in free markets with lots of competitors. When you have largely controlled markets (high barriers to entry) with very few competitors, you lose those benefits. This is Econ-101 stuff.
Whenever these mergers happen they always try to sell up the benefits to customers "by centralizing our efforts we can cut our own production costs greatly, which means we can provide better quality and even bigger savings on to our clients." While that is true in theory, in practice the lack of competition means there is nothing forcing them to provide these benefits, and so over time they don't provide them...and instead maximize their own profits by cutting corners on quality and price gouging. Merging eliminates the balancing factors in the market, which is what allows them to get away with this.
So that is what will happen. And it is nothing new. "All this has happened before. All this will happen again." --Pythia
*Yes, I am aware that there are actually other companies in the games industry at the moment...I was just filtering the set to those mentioned in the summary for the sake of simplicity. The principle still applies.
Since there appear to be a lot of misinformed people in this thread, this actually a merger of Vivendi Games and Activision. Blizzard has been a subsidiary of Vivendi Games (and it's predecessors) for a long time. The merges company is taking the name Activision Blizard instead of Activision Vivendi because Blizzard is a much for famous brand name and the Vivendi brand has been tarnished since the Vivendi Universal implosion while the Blizzard brand is known for quality. Blizzard has been known for it's ability to convince its owners that its formula works and it should be left alone for a long time now. âoeMike [Morhaime] has to train his new boss every time he gets a new boss.â
Blizzard was founded in 1991. It acquired by Davidson and Associates in 1994. Davidson was acquired by a a mail-order/conglomerate company CUC International in 1996 along with Sierra On-Line and Berkley Systems. Then in 1997 CUC merged with a hotel company HFS to form Cendant. After an accounting scandal in 1997 Cendant sold it's software arm to French publisher Havas. In 1999 French water conglomerate Vivendi acquired Havas and while working to acquire Universal (which it did in 2000) becoming Vivendi Universal. In 2002 Vevendi Universal began to enter financial trouble and began divesting many of it's properties. In 2004 it sold 80% of Vivendi Universal Entertainment to NBC keeping it's software properties. In 2006 it dropped Universal from it's name completely once again becoming Vivendi (with Vivendi Universal Games becoming Vivendi Games). In 2007 announced a merger of Vivendi Games with Activision which just became official, resulting in Vivendi owning a huge portion of Activision (now Activision Blizzard) stock (54% of shares outstanding).
Everyone knows why they're merging. It's to make money. This merger would never have happened if Blizzard had not released a certain terrible (but wildly successful) game. As long as they can keep that racket up, it doesn't really matter what quality they put out. Besides, it's not as if they were creative geniuses anyway. With or without Activision they will keep pushing the same tired old franchises. It's disturbingly similar to the Final Fantasy phenomenon. Has the Square-Enix merger considerably affected the quality of Square's properties?
I don't really get it. Blizzard has the reputation for being probably the highest quality development house in the entire industry... by a solid margin. And they are already printing money with World of Warcraft. This seems like a giant leap backwards for them on all fronts, but maybe I'm missing something.
First stop thinking about EA\Activision\etc as game companies. They are at the core Interactive Entertainment companies.
Just as Marvel is no longer a comic book publisher, they deal in intellectual property. Their product is the world and characters they create and the various outlets are the tools (comics, movies, games, etc.)
With that in mind Activision and EA are looking at entertainment resources. The reason for the mergers is to pool capital for large projects that are internal and self directed.
Case in point, how many good video game movies are there?
Ok with that answer in mind: How many of them were produced by the game company?
Ahh we are starting to see the motivation here.
Blizzard alone, despite being a large high quality producer of games doesn't have all the tools they need to push things to the next level. The inverse is also true Activision doesn't have the tools that Blizzard has.
We all know there is a Warcraft movie in the works. The more money that Blizzard can front in the production, the more control. If they could fund the movie completely, they have complete control.
This is what motivated Marvel to start doing their own movies. Look at Marvel based movies before they spun their own studio (Hulk, Daredevil, Ghost Rider, Electra, etc.) and look at the post results in Iron Man.
By combining resources they are given themselves better leverage for a complete Entertainment company with better cross platform capitalization of their intellectual properties.
ActivisionBlizzard can do more with existing IPs then Blizzard alone can. Remeber, business is just as much about networking personally then just the logistics of business-as-usual. Activision brings a lot of "Who to call for XYZ" and "So-and-So over at Paramount owes me a favor".
The same goes the opposite way, Activision can now dip into the substantial talent pool that Blizzard has, their biggest asset is their art department. Think of all the artists who can now branch out and do work for other IPs not getting burned out drawing their 400th Orc or 200th Zerg. Retaining talent isn't jsut about good benefits, but giving them something to do that keeps them energized.
The key is ensuring good management, keeping the creative forces insulated against the business lines, and ensuring that creativity and profitability co-exist as peacefully as possible. That takes strong leadership to say yes and no when needed.
That being said I would love to see some new use of the WoW IP, how about a racing game in the theme of Rally car racing through Azeroth and Outland. How about some FPS in the land of Starcraft. How about a few anime series based on Starcraft, Diablo, and Warcraft?
Maintain quality, respect the IP, keep focused and keep costs in control.
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
It's a Wall-E world. I think these business execs have taken Highlander a bit too seriously, buying and merging companies because in the end, there can be only one. So will it be Wal-Mart or Buy-n-Large?
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Mark my words! Now wrath of the lich king will definitely come out this Christmas. whether it's ready or not. Starcraft 2 will get kicked out of the door Christmas 2009, whether it's ready or not. Jar Jar will be a playable race. Diablo 3 will be renamed Diablo 2k10, come out on the xbawx 3 months before the PC and ps3. It will also have optional down loadable content with micro payments.
This is actually a bad thing for Americans, they're not being bought out by Blizzard they're being bought out by Vivendi. Vivendi is an aggressive french monopoly.
They're the ones that fired all 99 employees in the Dynamix division that produced Tribes 1 & 2, the only two money makers at the time at Sierra Online when they bought out Sierra.
world of turokcraft 3
ActiBlizz? Blizavision? Zardsion? BlizzAc? ZardVision?
I don't pay money for Google. If I'm paying for a game it better not have any ads in it. It would be like paying to see Blade 3 or I, Robot or the new Casino Royale or paying for a copy of NFSU2. I'm not going to pay twice.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I'm looking forward to the Mechwarrior action MMOG
God spoke to me.
Blizzard have always been good at supporting the Mac natively (Unlike EA). Activision have been quite the opposite.
Does this mean we can expect more or less Mac titles?
"Religion is the most malevolent of all mind viruses." - Arthur C. Clarke.
It's gonna be Brawndo, of course!
The other day I was watching American TV and a not-very-little video screen popped up in the lower right corner (more like quadrant) advertising some other program, totally obscuring Darth Vader trying to find Luke.
Brawndo, here we come!
...you defeat him by playing your guitar as he hurls colored dots down a narrow pathway, while the halls of the damned echo with the sounds of Psychobilly Freak Out.
If anything, Vivendi (Blizzard's owner) might mess around with Activision.
From a different article:
But that's all a minor point since, as a consumer of both brands, the same concern applies whichever side has ownership.
This is not my sig
You are right that "the game of yore" is looked at mostly with rosy colored glasses, but not for the correct reason IMHO. There were as much stinker , maybe more , in the past than there is now. But on the other hand you can't say the mechanic got more complex today. GUI and graphic got more compelx, this is right. You can't compare, say, a planescape torment graphic with a mass effect. But on the complexity, the depth of the game, I would wager that a lot of game of yore , the best one, are quite more complex that most twitch game of today. Mass effect as PRG touted as it was, is really a simple shooter with a few dialogue/rpg elements added it to sweet the deal. Bioshock ? Ditto. What reach maybe the same complexity is oblivion and NWN2.
All in all I would say that today's game have a tendency to reach a wider audience and be slightly less down in complexity, but higher in quality. But more important, the barrier to entry to compete to the top, is TODAY unwindable for an amateur. It was not so when graphic were not so complex.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Omni Consumer Products
The current prices on ebay are busting my bank account.
It's Vivendi + Activision.
I can understand two small companies trying to survive against a larger third company, but in your common merger, one company gives itself to the other, in essence.
Will this mean that the new entities games will support Macs nicely like Blizzard tend to do, or ignore them as Activision prefers?
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
I've been thinking for so long about how Blizzard needs a "World of Guitar Heroes" MMORPG to complement WoW and Diablo III but just wasn't sure how they would pull off the development with stretched programming resources.
When will Starcraft II be available?? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?
You know, I was going to post an on-topic question, but this is what I really care about.
Since Blizzard-Activision (BA) is now official, I thought I'd state the obvious acronym mash up headed for a headline near you.
BA vs. EA
Blizzard has been "le suck" since WoW came out. The MMO business model has changed them, for the worse. Merging with Activision is really just one last nail in the coffin.
The only thing I can think of, that would be even worse than this merger, is for Valve to sell out to EA.
The day that happens, I'll sell my graphics card and go back to Minesweeper. The moment a small, agile game house grows too big (or sells out), it loses all artistic control and starts producing formulaic garbage. There's no avoiding it, that's the nature of capitalism.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Pizza Hut in the Ninja Turtles games.
Although to be honest when you're as heavily merchandised as the Turtles were it is hard to tell where the game WASN'T an ad. (Sorry, I know, it was my childhood too.)
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Go play http://natural-selection.org/
Marines vs Aliens. In CO mode you "level up" to jetpacks or power armor, as Aliens into a heavily armored rhinoceros sized behemoth. In NS mode one rine is top down RTS, rest FPS. IMO most teamplay oriented computer game _ever_. (Well, I haven't played Eve Online)
They ARE out to get you simply because They are in it for themselves and they don't care about you.
What about fantasy NPCs fitting real-world brand names within their dialogue, or even names of characters, places, spells, etc?
Like Priest Chrysler complaining how some thieves from the Prada clan past the Timex river have been buggin him of late, and he'd like for you to get his Gilette blade of Purity back from them so he can cut the wedding cake.
I like to read reviews of a game before I buy it...I'd catch stuff like that from the screenshots and avoid the game.
I think the whole advertising industry is going to bust just like online businesses did, and return at a sensible level and will be much more targeted in nature, it's just much slower paced than the .com boom-and-bust was. It'll start when advertisers get some hard facts about how effective their advertising is, because the whole industry runs on bullshit right now, they just pull numbers out of their ass for just about everything...unfortunately while we're somewhere near the bust point, we may not live to see it.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Oligopolies aren't really much better than monopolies