Activision + Vivendi & Blizzard = Activision Blizzard
Holy Cow Level, Batman! As seen on Massively, Vivendi Games, including World of Warcraft developer Blizzard Entertainment, is now owned as a subsidiary of Activision. This is a mega deal, even bigger than the recent EA buyout of BioWare/Pandemic. Honestly, there’s not a whole lot I have to say specifically about this, other than it’s huge. Read the press release and Blizzard Activision FAQ about it for all the details.
My initial thoughts are that it’s a wasted opportunity to call the new hegemony Blizzivision.
Actually, I’m not sure it could be said to be a subdivision of activision — according to the site, Vivendi will own 51% of the combined companies. It looks like this is a play on Vivendi’s part to unlock Blizzard’s stock value…
Vivendi is really taking over Activision, BUT Activision is the stronger company so they mutually agreed to make a NEW company called Activision Blizzard with the Vivendi execs taking a back seat to the Activision execs…all this in the hopes of making an even stronger brand by including Blizz as a major player. Crazy!
loved that FAQ…was wondering how many different ways they could come up with to describe how they’re *not* changing.
Wait, there are supposed to be over NINE MILLION people paying 15 dollars each month and there is a bigger deal than that?
Did you know your index page is saying “Comments Off” on all your posts?
Oh, guess I should comment on this post while I’m posting a comment on this post, here… hrm…
I think there are good and bad things about this sort of industry consolidation – regardless of the industry – but they’re also sort of inevitable.
As with there being good and bad things about gravity – no sense really fretting about whether the good outweighs the bad or not.
Mundinator: My cynical nature leads me to suspect the executive seating arrangement was as much a part of the purchase agreement as the dollar-figures and stock allocations – and almost no consideration went into matching the best people to the best positions for them in terms of what would create the best management team.
However, I also realize that’s just pure unfounded cynicism on my part, and there’s no reason for me to be so jaded.
I did not know that. Weird. Thanks.
I can see it now.
Orcs in COD5.