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Far Cry 3 And The Stranger In A Strange Land This morning, Activision and Blizzard cracked the OJ for an AM conference call to investors (and of course, interested gaming media). It was a bit too early for our weekend hangovers to stand, but luckily MTV’s Stephen Totilo wrote an extensive account of the meeting. Here are the highlights aside from rumours of Dark Elf McMuffin ingestion:
As we announced last night, Vivendi Games (which includes Blizzard Entertainment) and Activision have merged after Vivendi bought a majority share in the company. Like with any merger, things will obviously change. Things like the name, which will now be Activision Blizzard. Say that a couple times: Activision Blizzard, Activision Blizzard, Activision Blizzard. Seeing that on a game box just might frighten customers. Thankfully, we won’t ever see that corporate moniker on a game box. Blizzard President and CEO Mike Morhaime explains:
In fact our games have never been branded as Vivendi. The Activision Blizzard brand will not appear anywhere as a consumer-facing brand. Basically it is a corporate brand for the overall company. If you want to buy stock in the company, the stock is called Activision Blizzard; the central shared services for the company, such as the sales and distribution force, will be Activision Blizzard. But Blizzard Entertainment will continue to be a publishing label… You should not see it [Activision Blizzard]on anything. It will not be associated with any product.
Thank goodness, because it sucks. Actard or Blizzivision would’ve been pretty sweet, though. CEO Talks [1Up, Thanks Andrew!]
So I woke up this morning to a press release (and a ton of emails to the tip line) announcing that Vivendi Games (which includes Blizzard) and Activision are merging. Raise your hand if you didn’t see that one coming, or do I just need another cup of coffee? Does this mean we have Guitarcraft to look forward to? The companies are going to be holding a conference call tomorrow morning at 8:30 EST that will be accompanied by a live webcast on the Vivendi and Activision websites. Vivendi will be the majority share holder in the deal after purchasing $US 1.7 billion in Activision stock, and the whole deal is reported to be worth a cool $US 18.9 billion. The full press release, with all the nitty gritty of the arrangement, is after the jump.
Update: If you don’t feel like slogging through the entirety of the press release, Blizzard has a nice little FAQ up on how this will impact the day-to-day operations of Blizzard. Short answer? It won’t. (thanks to Stephen Totilo for mentioning it).
