Vivendi and Activision merge! Forming Activision Blizzard

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Activision and Vivendi Games are to merge, becoming the world' s largest independent videogame publisher, in a deal valued at USD 18.9 billion, GamesIndustry.biz reports.

The new company, Activision Blizzard, now boasts a portfolio bursting with some of the top-selling videogame franchises including Blizzard' s World of Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo, Vivendi' s Crash Bandicoot and Spyro and Activision' s Guitar Hero, Call of Duty and the Tony Hawk series.

Activision shareholders are to receive USD 27.50 a share, a 24 per cent premium over Friday' s close of USD 22.15. Vivendi Games will contribute USD 1.7 billion in cash to the company and take a 52 per cent stake.

" This alliance is a major strategic step for Vivendi and is another illustration of our drive to extend our presence in the entertainment sector," commented Jean Bernard Levy, CEO of Vivendi.

" The combined strength of the existing management teams at both companies will set the stage for further profitable growth of Activision Blizzard.

" We look forward to being an active and supportive majority stockholder in a company that is poised to lead the worldwide interactive entertainment industry in the years ahead," he said.

Shares of Vivendi Games will be converted into 295.3 million new shares of Activision, which values Vivendi Games at USD 8.1 billion. Vivendi will also purchase 62.9 million newly issued shares in Activision for USD 1.7 billion in cash.

" By combining leaders in mass-market entertainment and subscription-based online games, Activision Blizzard will be the only publisher with leading market positions across all categories of the rapidly growing interactive entertainment software industry and reach the broadest possible audiences," commented Robert Kotick, CEO of Activision.

" By joining forces with Vivendi Games, we will become the immediate leader in the highly profitable online games business and gain a large footprint in the rapidly growing Asian markets, including China and Korea, while maintaining our leading operating performance across North America and Europe," he added.

Kotick will remain as chief executive of Activision Blizzard, while Vivendi Games boss Bruce Hack will become vice chairman and chief corporate officer. He will also lead the merger, expected to be compete in the first half of 2008.

Activision also said that it will now have access to Universal Music Group, the world' s largest music company, " which will benefit Guitar Hero and further extend our sizeable leadership position in music-based games."

The industry is banding together in large giants, i some how fear this will kill of creative freedom. Not that i fear for blizzard though.

Holy shit. I' ve been expecting the larger companies to gobble up the smaller ones for years but this deal is huge.

"This is sad. There's no other word for it. The person who invents a way to punch someone in the face over the Internet will make millions from the demand generated by people like this." Youtube comments

EA lost the throne?

Even if you break 2 legs from a crab it still runs!
What you gotta do is find its weak spot and do massive damage at it.

EA lost the throne?

They lost it to Activision already.

I dont want to celebrate, I want to sell you hate.

I hope this doesn' t change the way blizzard makes games.

"If you knew how good I am you would think I'm modest."

Go Blizzard and Activision! I don' t care if they merge. They make amazing games!


Oh...



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Vivendi who?

Vivendia is basically a huge french multi media company.

Even if you break 2 legs from a crab it still runs!
What you gotta do is find its weak spot and do massive damage at it.

Right...

Vivendi who?

Vivendi sucks ass.

Yes, everything vivendi has sucks ass but blizzard, because they let them do their own thing. And it better stay that way.

"If you knew how good I am you would think I'm modest."

Vivendi published for Valve with Half-life 1+2, Counter Strike etc until Valve screwed them with Steam. There was a huge lawsuit battle during the split.

So EA is a small fish now?

Both Vivendi and Activision are profitable while EA was losing money the last time I heard about their economy. So I think we can officially say that EA has lost the throne in several ways.

Im not gonna be happy for blizzard till they shut off there mmo (Or atleast name it somthing else) and make WC4

[IMG]http://img206.imageshack.us/img206/4130/newsigba8.jpg[/img]

lol WC4.... WC3 was good but sucked compared to SC. They are already making SC2. With how long blizzard take to make games WC4 is at least 10 years off.

"If you knew how good I am you would think I'm modest."

lol WC4.... WC3 was good but sucked compared to SC. They are already making SC2. With how long blizzard take to make games WC4 is

the word suck and warcraft doesnt match, no matter what else you write. The story and atmosphere in Warcraft 3 is superb. In any case i like both series just as much! SC has been neglected though

You can' t say " WarCraft" and " suck" in the same sentence UNLESS it is when comparing WarCraft 3 to StarCraft... or even WarCraft 2 for that matter. WarCraft 3 is a great great game but doesn' t hold a candle to StarCraft. I also found WarCraft 2 to be much better than 3 as well. I' m actually playing through WarCraft 3 again. Started a couple days ago. Great, just by no means SC great.

XBL Gamertag: Rampage99

" Basically, pollute the air all you want, your just speeding up the inevitable. Our future generations are f*cked as it is and there' s really nothing we can do about it. Have a nice day "

SC is a class A game, and so is Warcraft III, the campaign in WC3 is a tad more entertaining than the one in SC. though the gameplay is better balanced in SC.

Woah woah woah woah... I' m going to have to disagree with you comment on the capaign. Imo SC had the best story out of any game ever. That single player campaign was nothing short of perfect. WC3 had a great campaign but it never latched on like SC did.

XBL Gamertag: Rampage99

" Basically, pollute the air all you want, your just speeding up the inevitable. Our future generations are f*cked as it is and there' s really nothing we can do about it. Have a nice day "

EA lost the throne?

EA never had the throne . Ea rips folks off like George Bush and thats a fact not an opinion.

So wait EA is starting to make games of good quality (SKATE, Dead Space, whatever games Pandemic and Bioware make) while Activision is gonna start making thier major franchises an annual deal...and that puts them on top? So rehashing major franchises is what people want? hmm....

http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/15207/Activision-Confirms-COD-5-GH-IV-and-New-Tony-Hawk-Title/

Wait? Are you defending EA? You know Skate is going to be redone a million times. Dead Space looks like crap. We have yet to see what happens to Pandemic and Bioware. All the good talent could leave just like every other studio that was taken over by EA.

XBL Gamertag: Rampage99

" Basically, pollute the air all you want, your just speeding up the inevitable. Our future generations are f*cked as it is and there' s really nothing we can do about it. Have a nice day "

In the last 3 years, Activision have made a COD game every year, and they' ve all been good. Where as EA makes Madden every year and haven' t done a thing to the series until this year, but that just means they' ll rehash this years Madden until 2012, when the world ends

In the last 3 years, Activision have made a COD game every year, and they' ve all been good. Where as EA makes Madden every year and haven' t done a thing to the series until this year, but that just means they' ll rehash this years Madden until 2012, when the world ends

True The suck at making football games. I can' t wait until they lose the Nfl license.

I didnt like COD3 much at all. It could be fun somtimes but the single player was pretty damn lame. Proving Grounds is garbage so the Tony Hawk series is dead to me for now. Instead of expanding Guitar Hero and head down a route like Harmonix they ended up just giving you a disc with more songs and a new guitar. Im just thinking into the furtue of things.

EA is turnign its shit around (outside the main sports games). Dead Space sounds cool in concept and its pretty much out of EAs hands. Pandemic makes some pretty damn fun sandbox games while Bioware is taking over western RPGs. Skate altho not as varied as Tony Hawk has a unique challenge to it making it feel fresh. Battlefiled Bad Company looks like its gonna be some insane fun. Army of Two showed signs that EA is no longer willing to just send out any old game as they took it back into production to give it more time. Whether it turns out good or not is yet top be seen but at least they saw it had issues and put more time and money into it. Then you jump over to racing now this one still has some problems as Prostreet was meh, however Burnout Paradise looks like a nice new approach to the franchise.

I just thinks its lame that EA is making changes to its business model and expanding but losing now. Whereas Activision is using the same model EA was bashed for and getting praise for it. This will in turn bring EA back to its ways making the 2 biggest names in gaming nothing more the cut and paste factories.

Or maybe none that will happen at all. Who knows.

I don' t think Activision has changed much lately. Aside from this huge merger that is.

The way I look at it. I don' t care if you publish a bunch of shitty games, as long as you have a few great ones. And any publisher pumping out games like COD4 are good in my books. Even if a game like that only comes once a year.

As for EA, I think we can agree they seem to be making positive changes. The most important seems to be splitting into divisions. I' ll reserve judgement until Spore is released though.

True The suck at making football games. I can' t wait until they lose the Nfl license.

Unfortunately, as long as it sells the way it does they will never lose the license.

Mass, I' ll agree that EA is making attempts to turn around but we haven' t seen anything come of it yet. You are basing your opinions on a bunch of unknowns. Out of all the games you talked about Skate is the only one currently out and I will give that game a ton of credit because it is good. However like I said, it will most likely be rehashed because this is EA we are talking about.

Dead Space looks retarded to me (personal opinion) and I see it being a failure. Pandemic is making Mercenaries 2, yes, but they were doing that before they were bought much like Bioware with Mass Effect. Mercs 2 will be as much of an EA game as ME is aka not an EA game at all. What comes after will be the true test.

BF:BC while looking cool I' ll judge when I play it. The game has yet to be shown in playable form. Army of Two looked cool when it was first shown but at this point is looking less and less impressive imo. Again, until I play it I' m not going to give EA credit. Burnout... another one that still hasn' t come out.

As for CoD3... yeah, it sucked but it also wasn' t Infinity Ward handling it. CoD4 more than made up for 3. I agree with you on Tony Hawk. It' s fallen apart but we' ll see what they do to counter Skate. They haven' t had competition up until this point so now they have to make things better. Whether or not they do is up in the air. GH:III, yeah it' s a bunch more songs an not much more... but it' s a guitar game, what more are you going to do? They can' t exactly make Rock band now that Harmonix already did that.

I' m not going to praise Activision. In fact you can see that I have my negative feeling for them but at least they put out good games on a fairly consistent basis. EA doesn' t, they just drive themselves into the ground. If EA' s new attempts at being more original and breaking the mold work I' ll give them the credit the deserve but until they prove themselves I' m not going to act like they are the good guys. In fact all I see coming out of this merger for EA is that they are going to go on a buying frenzy and try to buy Ubisoft again or chase Eidos. Both scenarios will suck.

XBL Gamertag: Rampage99

" Basically, pollute the air all you want, your just speeding up the inevitable. Our future generations are f*cked as it is and there' s really nothing we can do about it. Have a nice day "

If EA screws up Bioware, im going Postal!

I wouldn' t venture to say which company is better. At the moment Acti/Blizz is definitely on top considering CoD4 is easily a GOTY contender, GH3 while being a repackaged version of GH2 is still selling fast, and then you have Blizz, which while I' m not a big fan of WoW, is still a very succesful and good company.

Meanwhile, EA really doesn' t have anything to show for itself yet other than Skate, which like others have said, will likely be done 5 times over. Sure they have Bioware and Pandemic, but their games were already in dev before EA bought them so we will have to see what their next projects are like.

All this being said, EA looks like they are turning over a new leaf and trying to focus on quality over quantity. Activision looks to be heading in a direction similar to what EA was doing about 4 years ago, where as EA seems to be learning from that mistake and change directions.

In my eyes, if Activision stays the course it' s on now, they won' t be that great 3 or 4 years down the road(except for Infinity Ward), whereas EA could be going really strong. There is no way to tell though, 3 years is a long time.

I like EA.

I guess World Of Warcraft: Rocks the 80' s?

I guess the merger dosent affect us much, but Ea sure wont like it, I heard there stocks shot up 15% [activaistions] after this news.

Awful name though.

Change is inevitable. Except from a vending machine.

Viva La Revolution! erm, I mean Viva La Wii!