Activision separation from Vivendi to resume
Activision Blizzard's separation from mega-conglomerate Vivendi was stalled when a lawsuit accused the company of not giving a fair shake to shareholders. Today, Activision Blizzard announced that the deal can go through, as the court has lifted an injunction placed to prevent the sale.
The sale is expected to complete by October 15. Vivendi will sell $5.83 billion worth of shares, with a holding company led by Bobby Kotick acquiring nearly half of those shares.
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replyAndrew Yoon posted a new article, Activision separation from Vivendi to resume.
Activision Blizzard's separation from mega-conglomerate Vivendi was stalled when a lawsuit accused the company of not giving a fair shake to...-
From when the merger originally happened: "Get ready for Tony Hawk's StarCraft: Ghost Extreme Vulture Racing." http://www.shacknews.com/article/50166/vivactardblivendivision-formed-industry-continues-morphing
Back when he was experimenting with "blog Shacknews" posts in a separate section to the news posts, then-Shacknews Editor Chris Remo expounded on the new acquisition:
The new Blevendivision is projected to out-earn EA in revenue. Maybe in response EA will go completely apeshit and start buying. It already owns 20% of Ubisoft and was being awful threatening a couple years back. Plus, there have been ongoing reports of Take-Two being receptive to buyers.
We're on our way to being a real entertainment industry like Hollywood and the music biz, where a few monolithic merger-formed entities dominate. We're on our way to joining other industries with bizarre monikers like PricewaterhouseCoopers and the now-trimmed AOL Time Warner.
How is a small publisher or independent developer going to be able to compete (and stave off acquisition) if their larger competitors just keep joining forces in a financial dick-waving competition? There's already BioWare/Pandemic (now part of EA), Square Enix, Namco Bandai, Sega Sammy, Foundation 9 (with its merged or acquired studios) and so on.
It didn't quite turn out that way, but instead went in a different, weird direction. PC games are sold primarily via online marketplace, and are surging back in sales as the stagnation of the long-drawn-out 7th Console Generation cause gamers to get bored and start building a gaming PC again (and whining about the difficulties of playing it on their TV from a couch). AAA games are getting more cutthroat, but are still pulling in tons of revenue; however, there are less and less winners, as big budget bets fizzle (Homefront and Medal of Honor Warfighter are two examples). We witnessed the implosion of two of those "megapublishers" in the failures of THQ and Infogrames (masquerading around as "Atari SA"). Indie games are getting lucrative via Steam, and have liberated themselves from the dumb certification costs for patches (thanks, Fez and Silent Hill HD Collection XBLA version).
As for Activision, we can literally set our clock to the Call of Duty release and PR schedule ("Ah, they're talking about multiplayer now; must be mid-October."). Also, Blizzard actually released StarCraft 2 and Diablo 3... though what they're going to do next is not quite so clear.
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