Fallout From the Activision and Vivendi Merger

SlappingOysters writes "Despite being announced last year, the merger of Activision and Vivendi into the company Activision-Blizzard only became official recently. Gameplayer investigates how the merger has affected upcoming games and development studios between the companies. As part of that investigation, they received official word that only three Vivendi games made the cut, and in this article they detail which titles have been dropped, which studios have been dropped, and who is likely to snap them up and add them to their portfolio. A lot of big names have been affected."

Comments

Yes...

[The Living Fractal]

This was expected. It's a common concept in resource application. It applies in all sorts of things, ranging from development to things like battle and war. It's called "focus fire" by some.

They are simply focusing their resources on the most important (they think) projects in order to release the best possible ones they can and maximize their business potential.

Fallout? Is that the right word? I guess... Unless you see it like I do: We're going to get a few really good products instead of a bunch of just ok products. I'll take the former every time.

Re:Yes...

[Ren.Tamek]

No, that's not how it goes. The titles Activision-Blizzard chose to keep for release were the safe bets - Spyro and Crash Bandicoot. Not great games by any accounts, but playable family entertainment. Games they're dropping include World in Conflict (critical gem) and Brutal Legend (developed by the Psychonauts team). The entire dev teams behind these titles now have no funding and an uncertain future.

Fallout is the right word, because what we're going to get is a few cash cows instead of a bunch of products of varying quality, including niche masterpeices.

Now I can see why A-B want to have few titles which sell in big numbers, but if every company did exactly the same thing our industry would collapse overnight under the weight of it's own mediocrity.