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.'"

Makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Both companies do little else other than release sequel after sequel for once popular series. Most of their original titles were released in the 90s.

Starcraft

[snl2587]

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

(Shudder...)

[DoofusOfDeath]

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:Here's an FAQ from Blizzard

[TubeSteak]

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.

Commentary

[hibiki_r]

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:World Of Warcraft

[DurendalMac]

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:Here's an FAQ from Blizzard

[Jugalator]

There will be no changes to our games, our websites, our personnel, or our day-to-day operations as a result of the deal.

That's what they always say first.

Simple.

[Kortalh]

To make money.

Re:Here's an FAQ from Blizzard

[Minupla]

There will be no changes to our games, our websites, our personnel, or our day-to-day operations as a result of the deal.

if this is true, how can:

... combining of resources will benefit all of the companies involved and will further strengthen Blizzard's ability to continue delivering high-quality content

Also be true? Either nothing is changing or something is, you can't have it both ways. The reason for mergers and aquisitions is generally that the companies involved believe that through the merger some gains can be made. The way that history proves works is through reductions is redundancy. (call these layoffs, retrenchments, rightsizing, as your personal tastes dictate) The other not-so-successful-historically model is the "merge two companies with no redundancies, run them together and lose money" model (ref: AOL-Time-Warner among others)

I have a solution...

[theorem4]

Put Blizzard employees in all management spots. Call me naive, but I think with them in charge it would keep a certain level of quality in the company that us fans like so much.

Re:Makes sense

[bigstrat2003]

I hate to be the one to break this to you, buddy, but Blizzard's franchises are STILL popular. Warcraft III was highly acclaimed when it came out, and widely enjoyed. Starcraft is still, of course, rabidly played in Korea and other places, as will Starcraft II, I imagine. World of Warcraft (the last game Blizzard released for a while) doesn't even count as a sequel to Warcraft in any way, considering that it isn't an RTS. So yeah, I don't know where you get your ideas, but it isn't reality.

Starcraft II ramifications

[AngelKurisu]

Blizzard has long been a 'Release it when its done' company--and the resulting products have almost always been very polished. Activision(at least in the past 15 years), has been willing to push crap out to market. With Activision's CEO taking over the merged company, can we expect anything -but- a quality drop in Blizzard's future products?

Guitar Hero

[Kohath]

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

[Memroid]

This sounds like something that could be done with the 'Tenacious D' name on it...

Another American company owned by France

[smchris]

They say it'll be a buyer's market with the dollar tanking over the next year.

Re:Guitar Hero

[One Childish N00b]

It's Vivendi that owns UMG, not UMG that owns Vivendi. Basically, that means Vivendi will do whatever makes the most money. Guitar Hero is massively popular, and selling tracks a-la iTunes-for-GH is likely to be far more profitable than suing people for anything they can think of. Picture the scene:

-
You're with your friends, having a few beers and some laughs on Guitar Hero.
- After the fifth beer, male bravado is starting to kick in. You and your buddies all start to think you're guitar Gods.
- "I bet you can't play Track X", says one of your buddies. You, of course, accept the challenge, and purchase Track X from the GH online store.
- Once you're done murdering that, you turn and you say to your equally bravado-fuelled friend, "oh yeah, I bet you can't play Track Y better than me", and off you trot, once again, to the online store to purchase Track Y.
- Repeat until you're all too drunk to work a controller.

I'm betting this would happen a *lot*, because one or two quid/bucks is nothing when you're having a laugh with your friends, which is where GH gets most of it's play.

Count your blessings

[PhrostyMcByte]

They could have been bought by EA instead. Count your blessings.

Re:Starcraft

[wizardforce]

I think you mean
As long as Starcraft 2 is still going to be released finished, this is fine with me. Let us hope that they don't rush SC2 out the door half-done and utter garbage shall we?