Activision and Blizzard merge.

[Eric]

This came out of right field.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/threa ... 3654&sid=1
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/threa ... 3659&sid=1
http://www.joystiq.com/2007/12/02/activ ... lion-deal/

[Julius Seeker]

Tony Hawkcraft?

So essentially Vivendi bought Activision and merged it into Blizzard.

[SineSwiper]

Heh, I didn't know that MTV owned Blizzard. Now, they own Activision. I kinda like the name. At least it tells you that it's a true merger, and not a takeover of resources.

[Lox]

MTV owns Blizzard? So now they own Activision which owns Guitar Hero. But they also own or publish Rock Band? So now they control both? Interesting.

[Blotus]

MTV owns Blizzard? So now they own Activision which owns Guitar Hero. But they also own or publish Rock Band? So now they control both? Interesting.

That can't be right.

[Julius Seeker]

Vivendi Games owns Blizzard along with a few other companies (such as Sierra). Vivendi Games is a branch of the Vivendi Group in France (similar to the Samsung and LG groups from Korea).

[Zeus]

Seek's right, it's Vivendi who owns Blizzard. That's the whole point of the merger, Blizzard - owned by Vivendi - and Activision are merging with Vivendi owning 52% of the shares (the remaining 48% to be owned by current Activision shareholders).

This is freakin' HUGE for gaming. Just go put this in perspective, the company is going to be 5 times as big as EA (in terms of capital investment), which until this was announced was the biggest third-party publisher. And considering you've now got Guitar Hero, Warcrack, and Starcrack all under one umbrella with Call of Duty sprinkled on the side (with MANY others), these guys gots a lot of big-ass titles.

[Flip]

Is another massive gaming company good for the industry? I mean, everyone hates EA... they churn out decent games, but does the large gaming company structure truly work?...

[bovine]

Is another massive gaming company good for the industry? I mean, everyone hates EA... they churn out decent games, but does the large gaming company structure truly work?...

as long as this merger somehow brings me homeworld 3, I will be happy. Everything else can be crappy tony hawk sequels for all I care.

[Julius Seeker]

Vivendi Games is fairly large now:

Activision
Blizzard Entertainment
Coktel
Fox Interactive
Knowledge Adventure
Massive Entertainment
Radical Entertainment
Sierra Entertainment

Not sure why people hate EA, they are one of the top 3 best North American companies.

As for Mega-sized gaming companies, it seems to work out quite well in Japan, why not here too? Though Vivendi and EA are quite different types of companies. Vivendi is more akin to Sony, whereas EA is a pure gaming company. I should add though, Vivendi is about 10 times the size of EA in terms of revenue; though Vivendi is only about 3-4 times the size in market value (despite being like 20 times more profitable, actually, it is probably a very good company to invest in depending on how good their dividends are).

[RentCavalier]

Seek, I've been meaning to ask, are you an economist in real life, or are you like a Sales Data junkie?

[Zeus]

Seek, I've been meaning to ask, are you an economist in real life, or are you like a Sales Data junkie?

I'm the economist and accountant. Not sure what Seek took

[SineSwiper]

Not sure why people hate EA, they are one of the top 3 best North American companies.

O RLY? Why would people hate a company like that?

[Julius Seeker]

Seek, I've been meaning to ask, are you an economist in real life, or are you like a Sales Data junkie?

I am into investment, yes. I didn't take Economics in school.


Sine: can you name a successful video game company (I.E. one more than 5 years old that is in the financial green) that doesn't have long work hours like that? If you work in the video game industry, you have to expect long crunch periods. If you can't take the crunch periods, you're in the wrong industry. The funny thing is that it is usually worse in small studios (they'll be working 12-15 hour days in the crunch with 24 hour+ days near the end of crunch periods) and will still miss milestones (in fact, it is rare that a project goes through where they don't successfully fulfill all the milestone obligations. EA is one of the very few companies around that gets their games out on schedule.

[Zeus]

Seek, I've been meaning to ask, are you an economist in real life, or are you like a Sales Data junkie?

I am into investment, yes. I didn't take Economics in school.


Sine: can you name a successful video game company (I.E. one more than 5 years old that is in the financial green) that doesn't have long work hours like that?

Bioware. That's why they've ranked in the top 50 COMPANIES in Canada the last few years. They very regularly go home after a regular workday.

[Andrew, Killer Bee]

Bioware. That's why they've ranked in the top 50 COMPANIES in Canada the last few years. They very regularly go home after a regular workday.

Ditto Insomniac.

Crunch periods indicate poor management, full stop. They shouldn't be necessary.

[Eric]

Blizzard also treats it's employee's right, from what I've heard it's a great place to work.

[Julius Seeker]

The irony is that Blizzard is owned by Vivendi and Bioware is owned by Electronic Arts. Though this isn't typical of the industry; at least for programmers.

[Blotus]

Every day at work is crunch time for me. Everybody else is just a pussy.

[SineSwiper]

Yeah, that's three examples there. Right with Andrew there: overworked people is poor mgmt of resources. If you expect to have people work OT all the time, then you expect to hire some more fucking people. Just because the OT is free doesn't mean you should take advantage of it every day.