News: Industry News | Vivendi and Activision Merge Page 1

Industry News | Vivendi and Activision Merge

02.12.2007

In a surprising move, Vivendi and Activision have announced a partnership bringing together their resources and franchises, including Blizzard's World of Warcraft.

The new company will be known as Activision Blizzard.

Activision, one of the world's leading independent publishers of interactive entertainment, is best known for its top-selling franchises, including Guitar Hero

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tiamat1990 02.12.2007#1

They're honestly turning into the new EA.

JoshSL 02.12.2007#2

Interesting... Lots of mergers lately eh? I wonder if this will increase quality of games? Or if WoW will change at all?

To me they were both pretty obscure publishers, I never bought stuff from Activision OR Vivendi. It was mostly merchandised/liscenced crap.

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mooojc 02.12.2007#3

Interesting merge, i honestly didn't see this one coming,

Mason 02.12.2007#4

This one came out of absolutely nowhere this morning, so it's been kept well underwraps. There have been a couple of shifts in both companies in terms of both staff and location within the last week, so the clues were there but nobody picked up on it at all (though at least one of the changes I know about could be sheer coincidence). Big surprise.

Activision and Vivendi are both big, and this move pretty much makes them the biggest third party publisher - I think they're bigger than EA in this form. Hopefully they can use their combined resources to bring out some nice fresh new games.

( Edited on 02.12.2007 23:33 by Mason )

originaljohn 03.12.2007#5

i wouldn't mind seeing guitar hero coming out with a online music store, something like itunes for all formats. i'm surprised at this merger hopefully we'll see star craft on consoles too lol

M.E.[zero] 03.12.2007#6

[Hi first timer here] Wait a second!? First, industry giants Microsoft & Bungie just suddenly pull apart, then EA aquires both Bioware and Pandemic and become a trio, and now Activision & Vivendi are now joining forces to create Activision Blizzard!? What the hell is going on!!?!
...but hey no one saw this coming...:l

mooojc 03.12.2007#7

Wonder if even Nintendo are going to merge anytime soon.

Canyarion 03.12.2007#8

Pfffffffff did you read this part?

Stated by Blizzard:
From our interactions with the Activision team, it is clear we have much in common in terms of our approaches to game development and publishing.

Activision launches crappy movie tie-ins while Blizzard cancels games that have been in development for 4 years, just because they won't be able to score a 9 or higher. So yeah, they have so much in common!!

Laurelin 03.12.2007#9

building bigger companies didn't increase the quality of creative products to date.

I find your lack of faith disturbing!

~~Buffy the Fanboy Slayer 03.12.2007~~#10

Corporate dollars will always have a negative effect on gaming from an originality point of view. Big companies like this only produce based on market research. As such, you get dross.

It is no different to music, movies and television. This is the sort of company (like EA and Ubisoft) that will give you Brittney Spears, Big Brother and Cheaper By The Dozen 2.

The hope for the future is and always will be independent, smaller companies who just look to these companies to distribute their gems. That is not to say that they won't occasionally stumble on a gem (like Ubisoft and Beyond Good & Evil), but the misses will always outweigh the hits (by a lot).

Temporarily banned until further notice.

Darkflame 03.12.2007#11

Simply a defensive move against EA, imho.

Bad news for the games industary this is getting more and more common.

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