Activision Blizzard Merger Official
Originally announced in late 2007, the merger was approved by shareholders earlier this week. The new Activision Blizzard corporation is valued at roughly $18.9 billion, marking one of the largest corporate consolidations in the industry's history.
"We are very excited about the opportunity for Activision Blizzard to create a broader entertainment software platform," said Activision Blizzard chairman Rene Penisson. "We are determined to 'think big'!"
According to the terms of the transaction, Vivendi will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Activision. Through the merger and a $1.7B stock purchase, Vivendi will acquire roughly 358.3 million shares in the new company, amounting to a 52% ownership stake in Activision Blizzard.
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Makes you wonder whose business strategy becomes dominant. I hated Vivendi's moves with a passion; it's what pissed off gamers years ago, and it's what drove Valve away.
I don't have much good insight on the business-dev relationship, but to me, Activision seemed to be good at playing "hands-off" with Id and Raven, but the stuff from Activision Value and some of their other owned developers seemed to suffer.-
Not trying to start a console vs pc thing going on but wasn't there some news item stating that Activision gets a major portion of their profits from 360? Same as every other publisher it seems.
Wouldn't surprise me if Blizzard was asked/forced to make a console game(s), even bring back Ghost. Which is fine, as long as they also keep making PC games. But not like Bioware where they make 1 pc game for every 2-3 on console.