Fallout From the Activision and Vivendi Merger 51
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."
Is ANY company better after a merger? (Score:4, Interesting)
Serious question: can you name any company that was better after a merger? I can't think of a single example! (And when I say "better" I mean better from the customer's or employee's point of view not just a short-term-stockholder's view.)
Sierra (Score:3, Interesting)
As someone who basically grew up on Sierra adventure games (King's Quest was ythe first adventure game I ever played, on the IBM PC Jr, with IR Keyboard!) I have to wonder what in the world their problem is.
King's Quest? Space Quest? The adventure games haven't gotten a lot of play the last ten years, but now that we see Sam & Max coming back, and episodic content online, how hard would it be to create a 3rd person Quest for Glory action/adventure RPG? Count me as first in line to get that one!
Phantasmagoria? Gabriel Knight? Those two *at least* could be crafted into horror/action games. Not that they should.
I really hope these games dont' get buried under legal BS as so many important titles have in the past. There's a lot of marketing potential there, and if it's done the right way it could make whoever has the rights a nice little pile of cash, and maybe a new following.
Companies don't merge to benefit customers. (Score:4, Interesting)
Or employees. Customers are just people they sell their products to; employees are people they hire when they need labor. The definition of "better" doesn't include them. Better, in business terms, means more valuable and more profitable.
Electronic Arts was definitely better after it bought Tiburon. Tiburon was a truly excellent development studio, working closely with EA, and it was in both their interests for EA to buy them.
Vibrant in-text ads (Score:3, Interesting)
Yet another website that uses in-frame popups when you just mouse over a word, and refuses to disable them.
This kind of annoyvertising reminds me of X10.com's popups, and shouldn't be tolerated.
Re:Yes... (Score:3, Interesting)
I seriously doubt the November release is in danger. I'm wondering more about Diablo 3's release.