GameRecoil -> -> Activision and Vivendi Games Merger Complete

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  You will now be able to play Guitar Hero 3 in a new expansion pack for World of Warcraft. Okay, not really, but kinda.
  
  Activision, Inc. and Vivendi Games have completed their merger to become Activision Blizzard, which pretty much makes sense. The company will be at Activision's current place of business in Santa Monica, California. That probably means Vivendi's building wasn't as nice or possibly had termites eating away the structure.
  
  Nonetheless, Vivendi SA CEO Jean-Bernard Levy said, "We have created the world leader in online and console games with this transaction, and the combined strengths of the two businesses offer immense growth potential. I am also very confident that, with the new leadership team in place, the new entity is perfectly positioned to take advantage of these rapidly developing markets across the globe."
  
  Seriously, what else was he going to say?
  
  Likewise, the Activision CEO, Robert Kotick, explained that merging a game with almost 11 million subscribers (WoW) and a game as popular as Guitar Hero is a good thing. Which it's nice that he pointed that out because otherwise, everyone would've assumed it was a terrible idea. Or not.
  
  It's bad news for Electronic Arts because now Activision Blizzard is the biggest third-party game-software publisher out there. And by biggest, I mean the richest.
  
  As far as numbers go for those of you interested in the business end of how this merger went down, it basically went like this: Vivendi Games, valued at $8.1 billion, combined with another $1.7 billion (possibly in Mountain Dew cans left-over from the programmers' late nights) were contributed to purchase 52% of the newly formed Activision Blizzard. In addition, Vivendi will attempt to acquire another 16% with a $4 billion all-cash offer to current Activision shareholders at $27.50 per share.
  
  Wonder if they checked the NASDAQ today and noticed the shares were trading at $32 since the merger was announced? If so, they're probably having a bad day now.

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  Posted July 10th, 2008

  Category: PC News, PS3 News, Wii News, Xbox 360 News,   Add to favorites

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