Activision/Blizzard splits from Vivendi

TwistedAegis

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I searched first and didn't see anything, surprised this isn't a topic:

http://money.cnn.com/2013/07/26/investing/activision-vivendi/index.html?iid=HP_River

My first thought at the headline was hmm, very slightly cautiously optimistic.

Activision Blizzard plans to buy back 429 million shares for about $5.8 billion from French media company Vivendi. Two company executives and a group of investors -- including China's largest internet company Tencent -- will purchase another block of 172 million shares for $2.3 billion.

The deal should deepen the relationship between Activision and Tencent, an ambitious Chinese firm that has been engineering a foray into mobile gaming.

Then I see they're getting in bed with Chinese gold farmers and mobile-centric games. Goodbye Blizzard.
 
The only way I would buy a Blizzard game again is if they split from Activision.
 
The only way I would buy a Blizzard game again is if they split from Activision.

By all accounts Blizzard is pretty much left alone to do whatever they want. I believe that was actually the big part of the deal when Sierra bought them and it stuck around when Vivendi bought Sierra.
 
Vivendi cash cow, gone. TBH, I don't really care that much anymore. Other companies are filling the void, making games I want to play.
 
By all accounts Blizzard is pretty much left alone to do whatever they want. I believe that was actually the big part of the deal when Sierra bought them and it stuck around when Vivendi bought Sierra.

They are in fact. Even with the name attached , Activision doesn't push them to do anything. Blizzard's mistakes are its own.
 
Better news would have been that Bobby Kotick was thrown on the streets and got DLC shoved down his throat with a helping of Elite to make sure it goes down.

You can thank that faggot for all the rubbish associated with Activision.
 
You will face the wrath of my TerROAR


LOL! I ALMOST have an urge to play Diablo 3 again. Keyword, almost. Spent many tens of hours of my life on that shitfest before realising how utterly pointless crap that game was. :eek:
 
Tencent is like cancer when it comes to gaming companies. They buy them up and the squeeze them for all the revenue they can and then they churn them out and move on to the next company.
 
Tencent is like cancer when it comes to gaming companies. They buy them up and the squeeze them for all the revenue they can and then they churn them out and move on to the next company.

Sounds more parasitic than cancerous. Indeed.
 
I got burned the hardest in my gaming history buying Diablo 3. I am not buying more Blizzard games after being burned so bad!
 
We all fell in love with Blizzard at some point. IMHO, for us gaming vets, this is a bittersweet start of the last nails being put into a coffin. In reality the only thing left of this once obsessively loved company is the name. I personally don't see anything on the horizon that will save them from themselves.
 
To all those that say that they will never buy another Blizzard game; we will all buy the next Blizzard MMO, and when you do buy it and post in that game's megathread I will link to this posts you made here that state that you will never buy another Blizzard game. ;)
 
To all those that say that they will never buy another Blizzard game; we will all buy the next Blizzard MMO, and when you do buy it and post in that game's megathread I will link to this posts you made here that state that you will never buy another Blizzard game. ;)

I can guarantee you that I won't buy it. Especially if it's pay monthly bullshit.
 
No. Activision didn't have a hand in Blizzard at all. Blizzard operates independently. Blizzard's failures are entirely the fault of Blizzard.

YOUR PATHETIC ATTEMPT AT REASONING AMUSES ME MORTAL!
 
Why are people so uncomfortable with the idea that Blizzard can ruin itself? Not that I think they've literally become Hitler, but they aren't churning out gold like they used to. As I generally like to say: times change, people change (both the people in the business and ourselves as gamers/consumers), industry expectations and standards change -- for better or worse, though it's quite frequently worse in our eyes.
 
Why are people so uncomfortable with the idea that Blizzard can ruin itself? Not that I think they've literally become Hitler, but they aren't churning out gold like they used to. As I generally like to say: times change, people change (both the people in the business and ourselves as gamers/consumers), industry expectations and standards change -- for better or worse, though it's quite frequently worse in our eyes.

It's because of ample evidence that Kotick has the reverse Midas Touch. Everything he touches just turns to shit.

He ruined great franchises like Guitar Hero, Tony Hawk, Call of Duty, and the list goes on and on. He tries to squeeze out revenue in any way he can. He's actually about creating as many revenue streams as possible.

While that works and it's great business sense in the short term, it's a long term disaster, because once those franchises become too oversaturated on the market, then they just go belly up, which is what happened with GH and TH, and Call of Duty still does well on brand name alone, and also because it happens to be in a popular genre devoid of any real competition outside of Battlefield.

Take away BF and WoW and Activision would go the way of Acclaim, and that is bankruptcy.

Basically Blizzard just swapped one pimp for another.
 
To all those that say that they will never buy another Blizzard game; we will all buy the next Blizzard MMO, and when you do buy it and post in that game's megathread I will link to this posts you made here that state that you will never buy another Blizzard game. ;)

Wouldn't need to buy it if it's F2P :p

It's going to be hard even for Blizzard to make a MMO that will have the kind of dominance WoW enjoyed. I don't doubt it's going to get a lot of attention at first because it's Blizzard, people would be making big bucks selling beta account if they could. But the important point is whether it can sustain it for many years like WoW is doing.

I would have more confidence if Blizzard is independently developing it. If Activation have any say, then I'm no longer that confident. Some rumor were saying Titan will be casual MMO. If that's true, it wouldn't surprise me ithat Activation indeed do have a say in it.
 
I bet titan is done for, 8.5 billion in an attempt to buy the company back usually means a lot of projects go away.

Blizzard wasnt necessarily ruined for losing North, but really when those developers/creative thinkers left.
 
I bet titan is done for, 8.5 billion in an attempt to buy the company back usually means a lot of projects go away.

Actually they made the move to Tencent to support Titan and their F2P business Model.
 
I don't think Titan is going to help them. It's either going to be SC Ghost all over again, or similar to other MMO's. Released unfinished, sloppy, buggy.
 
It's because of ample evidence that Kotick has the reverse Midas Touch. Everything he touches just turns to shit.

He ruined great franchises like Guitar Hero, Tony Hawk, Call of Duty, and the list goes on and on. He tries to squeeze out revenue in any way he can. He's actually about creating as many revenue streams as possible.

While that works and it's great business sense in the short term, it's a long term disaster, because once those franchises become too oversaturated on the market, then they just go belly up, which is what happened with GH and TH, and Call of Duty still does well on brand name alone, and also because it happens to be in a popular genre devoid of any real competition outside of Battlefield.

Take away BF and WoW and Activision would go the way of Acclaim, and that is bankruptcy.

Basically Blizzard just swapped one pimp for another.

I don't disagree with the correlation, but I think the case with Blizzard a false cause fallacy that ended up becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. And again, I don't think they're churning out gold like they used to, but each new project they presented since the merger onward was met with the same old buzzwords. Now people approach everything they do with negativity, eager to jump and say "See?! I told you so!" when things go sour. I prefer that people criticize the actual problems with a game and leave it at that. There's really no need to postulate the "root cause" of any shortcomings that happen, as it's both inconsequential and misleading.

I can imagine many hardcore Blizzard fans marking the "end of Blizzard" after they launched their subscription-based MMO game in 2004. Or during their WoW reign, implemented a paid name change service on top of the normal fare. I personally remember how disappointed I was with WC3 and found it mediocre, wondering why Blizzard made it feel worse than SC:BW. In short, you can probably pick a timeline somewhere between 2000-2007 and say the same things without having to attach an external blame to it (except maybe Vivendi). If these things happened a few years later, we'd be up in arms screaming "Fuck you, Activision!" but that's simply not how things panned out.
 
To all those that say that they will never buy another Blizzard game; we will all buy the next Blizzard MMO, and when you do buy it and post in that game's megathread I will link to this posts you made here that state that you will never buy another Blizzard game. ;)

Feel free, I guess. I wouldn't buy it unless it's just really good. I had misgivings when D3 information was given out towards the end of it's hype time. Glad I was right. Didn't buy that or WoW. So I'm pretty much in the clear. I can't imagine buying another blizzard game unless something radical happens. Which it probably won't.

But I did play SC2/D3/WoW a bit though. I beat SC2's campaign and I thought it was good, but being told to buy the game in three parts at the price of 3 games... yea... no.

D3 started out sounding awesome, then it deteriorated with every new announcement.

WoW... I just can't get into it's graphics and it's play style. But most MMOs do that to me. UO for LIFE!
 
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