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.'"

A dupe in itself?

[hysma (546540)]

Not too often the summary itself IS the dupe...

World Of Warcraft

[tsj5j (1159013)]

How is the WoW community going to take it?

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 ... alot.

Re:World Of Warcraft

[DurendalMac (736637)]

I doubt they're going to mess with Blizzard. It's going to be more like the Disney-Pixar buyout. Disney was at least smart enough not to mess with what Pixar was doing, because it was damned obvious that they were doing something right. If Activision has any shred of intelligence, they'll let Blizzard keep doing what they're doing with minimal interference, because Blizzard is making over $100m a month off of WoW.

Re:World Of Warcraft

[ZombieRoboNinja (905329)]

Actually, if you look at the Gamasutra summary, it's Blizzard (well, Vivendi) buying out Activision. Vivendi gets 52% of the stock of the merged company and 6 of 11 seats on the board.

Re:World Of Warcraft

[ZombieRoboNinja (905329)]

Erm, which I suppose I should link.

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=16457 [gamasutra.com]

Re:World Of Warcraft

[by Anonymous Coward]

Yes, obviously they bought Blizzard out so that they could nerf warriors; it had nothing to do with the money.

I can't wait until I can buy their games.

[Seumas (6865)]

I can't wait to start buying their games and various swag -- all emblazoned with the new Blactavision logos!

Re:I can't wait until I can buy their games.

[shystershep (643874)]

I prefer the Actalizzard, myself.

Re:I can't wait until I can buy their games.

[gEvil (beta) (945888)]

I'm kinda partial to Blizzavision.

Re:I can't wait until I can buy their games.

[flyingsquid (813711)]

I'm kinda partial to Blizzavision.

No, that's what causes me to hit on ugly chicks after six drinks.

New MMORPG

[Valacosa (863657)]

World of Command and Conquer?

Re:New MMORPG

[Valacosa (863657)]

Damn - upon further research, I find that it was EA that bought Westwood, not Activision. Now I feel really stupid.

It's too bad too. Imagine how awesome it would be to have a game where orcs could be pwned by an Obelisk of Light.

Here's an FAQ from Blizzard

[Jon.Laslow (809215)]

http://blizzard.com/press/activision-faq.shtml [blizzard.com]

Provides some details. From their front page:

Blizzard to Join Forces With Activision
We're pleased to announce that along with the other companies that make up Vivendi Games, we are merging with Activision to form a new global entertainment organization called Activision Blizzard (pending shareholder and regulatory approval). Similar to our previous arrangement, Blizzard Entertainment will now operate as a division of this new organization.

There will be no changes to our games, our websites, our personnel, or our day-to-day operations as a result of the deal. However, this combining of resources will benefit all of the companies involved and will further strengthen Blizzard's ability to continue delivering high-quality content for our players around the world for many years to come.

Re:Here's an FAQ from Blizzard

[TubeSteak (669689)]

However, this combining of resources will benefit all of the companies involved and will further strengthen Blizzard's ability to continue delivering high-quality content for our players around the world for many years to come.

I would have thought Activision was the one that needed to strengthen their ability to deliver high quality content.

They routinely rush studios to push out complete and utter crap under the Activision Value title. Even the decent games still come with serious flaws due to the rushed timetables.

My gosh

[guardiangod (880192)]

Activision and Blizzard have said they will form "the world's most profitable games business"

I screamed.

Starcraft

[snl2587 (1177409)]

As long as Starcraft 2 is still going to be released, this is fine with me.

(Shudder...)

[DoofusOfDeath (636671)]

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.

Re:(Shudder...)

[cdomigan (833362)]

I seriously hope that the new overlords don't mess with this

Not the end of the world if they do - you can always SPAWN MORE OVERLORDS

Commentary

[hibiki_r (649814)]

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.

Re:Commentary

[jd (1658)]

The Ghost of Infocom cries out in the wind.
The Ghost of Infocom moves north.
The Ghost of Infocom enters.
The Ghost of Infocom hits Blizzard with the long sword.

EA is no longer alone at the top.

[6350' (936630)]

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).

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 [livejournal.com], which should be an interesting public dynamic to watch :P

Guitar Hero

[Kohath (38547)]

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.

Re:Guitarcraft: Lords of Music

[rootofevil (188401)]

Thrall Pro Skater 2: grinding in dalaran

Re:Guitarcraft: Lords of Music

[david.given (6740)]

How long until I can play some crazy rhythm-based RTS with my guitar hero controller?

You know, that might actually be quite fun. Did you ever play Loom? That was a point-and-click adventure game where all your actions were done by playing short phrases of music.

Update it to the present day, and you have your character roaming the wilderness blowing monsters away with your sw33t r1ffs. The more powerful the spell, the harder it is to play, so your character's skills are directly related to your skills. If you could solve the lag issue, you could even have the ability to team up with other players and jam together for extra power.

Hmm. Different character classes would map to different types of music quite well. Healer == psychedelic 60s. Tank == 80s power ballad. Fighter == rock. Necromancer == death metal...

Re:Starcraft II ramifications

[Cyberllama (113628)]

I can afford the karma hit so I'm gonna say it like it is:

Blizzard hasn't been a "release it only when it's done" company since Warcraft 3: TFT. I've Participated in the last 4 Blizzard betas, and there was a remarkable shift from Warcraft 3: RoC to Warcraft 3: TFT -- you almost couldn't even call TFT a beta test by comparison. It lasted maybe 2 months total? The game came out very incomplete -- missing an entire single player campaign from what had been promised -- but was slowly added in over the course of several balance patches (the game as also a joke of balance when it came out). Blizzard, to their credit, did do a good job with the final product -- it just took them a couple months worth of patches after release to get the job done.

I hate to be the one to break the bad news to you, but Blizzard has been a "patch it till it's done" company for a few years now, just like everyone else.

This actually works out well enough in the MMORPG setting since often they are able to patch in missing content and polish/fix other content before players even get to it -- since it takes players some time to burn though the lower-end content which tends to be the most polished/playtested.

I do give them credit for actually delaying TBC (thus causing it to miss it's initial November 30th release date which would have meant massive Christmas sales) and spending more time with it -- but they almost didn't have a choice there -- there was literally no content above level 67 at the time and 3 out of the 7 zones weren't even populated/open/quested/etc, not to mention none of the raid content was implemented yet.