I'm a little overwhelmed by the news that Vivendi has acquired control of Activision to form Activision Blizzard. The PDF (you'll need Adobe Reader) for the transaction is here.There is an excellent writeup of the whole deal with quotes from the principals over at Massively, but here are the highlights:
- Vivendi is contributing Vivendi Games (which includes Blizzard ) and some cash to the tune of $1.7 Billion.
- Vivendi will have a 52% stake in Activision Blizzard.
- Activision will be merged entirely into Activision Blizzard and will bring all of their games including Guitar Hero, Call of Duty and Tony Hawk.
What do you think of this news? Will the merger hurt WoW? Or do you think Blizzard will be able to continue mostly autonomously considering they are currently such a cash cow for their owners?
[Thank you to everyone for all the tips!]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
12-02-2007 @ 1:31PM
arun84h said...
Oh God. Please don't turn into an SOE shit hole.
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12-02-2007 @ 1:31PM
Zeplar said...
The forum reaction to this was.... wow. Haven't seen that much anger since shamans exploded.
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12-02-2007 @ 1:33PM
Sylythn said...
If they're smart, they'll treat Blizzard as a separate autonomous entity and let them do thing their way, the right way for them - similar to how Fisher-Price is owned by Mattel, but you'd probably never know it unless you saw internal documents or read it spelled out in a news article.
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12-02-2007 @ 1:36PM
Zeplar said...
That part about "it's done when it's done" possibly being removed... DON'T DO IT ACTIVISION! Blizzard rose up 3 or 4 notches in my respect when they canceled Starcraft Ghost after spending millions on it; this would bring them down.
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12-02-2007 @ 1:43PM
Jagnon said...
Look :
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=3168513659&sid=1
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12-02-2007 @ 1:46PM
Scorp said...
byebye WoW... Bye bye Blizz.... :'( will miss you very much... /cry
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12-02-2007 @ 1:47PM
huw1000 said...
This is the end of native Mac support for Blizzard games. It'll be dropped to save time and money, then when everyone gets angry and makes a stink we'll get half-assed Transgaming ports 6 months later. Yay Activision.
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12-03-2007 @ 12:31AM
vlad said...
hehe. now what game are all 6 mac users gonna play?
12-03-2007 @ 9:06AM
Jamus said...
My thoughts exactly. Activision is not welcome news.
12-02-2007 @ 1:49PM
RJ said...
From what I've gathered, this really has nothing to do with Blizzard aside from the "Activision Blizzard" name (which to be honest, sounds like something a villian with a poor grasp of english would say when activating his blizzard creating doomsday device), and that both companies will be independant of each other. So it seems to be less a merger and more Vivendi buying up Activision and changing the name. Blizzard will still be Blizzard Entertainment, while Activision gets stuck with Activision Blizzard.
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12-02-2007 @ 1:59PM
Robin Torres said...
Lol! You are so right about the name.
12-02-2007 @ 1:49PM
Zeplar said...
There's a new york times article on this, with allusions to Activision eventually merging with EA to make a near-monopoly. Confirmation?
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12-02-2007 @ 1:54PM
cjcobbe06 said...
Or, you know... they might actually be business savvy and let Bliz do the Bliz thing. Having native platforms has garnered some of the best business in the gaming industry. Bliz has consistently put out top-quality games. I highly doubt that the guys have decided to do away with Bliz's major selling points.
Also: there's probably a lot in the contract that we haven't seen involving those points. Don't get your knickers in a twist until the Apocalypse actually does come.
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12-02-2007 @ 2:08PM
Tavil said...
I don't think this will have much of an effect on Blizzard. It will probably be business as usual for them.
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12-02-2007 @ 2:22PM
SaintStryfe said...
If Activision was buying Viviendi games, I'd be worried. But it's not - Vivendi is buying Activision.
It's not likely much will change for Blizz itself. Most of Activision will still churn out Tony Hawk games, a small corner will make money with Guitar Hero, and Blizz will still be the company we all know and love.
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12-02-2007 @ 2:26PM
MaNiAk said...
As long as Activision doesn't try to change Blizz...I'll be happy. Blizzard has been doing just fine on their own, and it needs to stay that way! All Blizz needs is the extra funding to help increase the quality of their games. The second I hear of deadlines and release dates...I will be upset :(
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12-02-2007 @ 2:28PM
Calaana said...
Leave blizzard alone, let them keep doing their own thing; It will, in the end, give a better profit margin than a few years of awesome income followed by complete rejection. We might rag on blizzard for it's choices, but nobody has ever ragged on them for producing a bad quality product: They just don't.
The people of the world plea to you Activision; Leave the guys the hell alone. And give them cookies.
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12-02-2007 @ 2:31PM
Charlie Taylor said...
It looks like Blizzard entertainment will remain a separate developer guys! From the press release:
" Mike Morhaime will continue to serve as President and Chief Executive Officer of Blizzard Entertainment"
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12-02-2007 @ 2:33PM
Ian said...
w...t...f...b/s!
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12-02-2007 @ 2:35PM
Chris Anthony said...
Commenters above have made some very cogent points: that Vivendi is buying Activision and adopting the other company's name (which is a time-tested practice in business mergers), and that since Blizzard still has a president and CEO after the merger, it's likely that it will continue to be allowed to operate autonomously.
My perspective: if Activision has any sense of historical irony at all (they were originally formed, remember, because Atari was far too strict and imposed too many limitations on their programmers), they'll leave Blizzard alone.
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