Activision/Blizzard possibly up for sale?

[RayCathode]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-...-discuss-activision-unit-sale-on-june-22.html

Vivendi SA (VIV) is set to decide on the future of its video-game unit Activision Blizzard Inc. (ATVI) at a senior executive meeting this month as it considers options for a reorganization, said people with knowledge of the matter.

The main scenario to be discussed is a sale of part or all of Vivendi’s 61 percent stake in Activision, the maker of “Call of Duty” with a market value of about $13 billion, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the meeting is private.

 

[sygyzy]

Who could possibly afford to buy Blizzard or Activision?

 

[Grooveriding]

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/201...king-to-sell-activision-blizzard/#more-111062

Maybe some execs at Vivendi played Diablo 3 and realized it was time to dump Blizzard.

 

[Zenoth]

Not even EA could buy them (good thing). Not sure how that could ever happen at all, anyone got ideas? According to its Wiki page, Activision Blizzard has around 13 billion in total assets.

 

[sactoking]

Doesn't Apple have something like $100,000,000,000 in cash on hand or readily accessible?

 

[Anubis]

besides apple and MS who even has the money to purchase them?

 

[zinfamous]

As anyone here considered that probably no one has the money to purchase them?

 

[postmortemIA]

As anyone here considered that probably no one has the money to purchase them?

there could be more than one buyer, investment group, etc.

 

[sygyzy]

Yes, I did in post #2. The Zenoth, then Anubis!

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

Hopefully EA does something to buy them, then they could all suck together instead of separately.

As anyone here considered that probably no one has the money to purchase them?

Nope. Nobody at all. Congratulations.

 

[nurturedhate]

this reads more like a sale of just the activision side and not blizzard

 

[greenhawk]

this reads more like a sale of just the activision side and not blizzard

so the actual buy price is 1% of the 13 billion?

130 million for Activision...

 

[greenhawk]

there could be more than one buyer, investment group, etc.

if I was part of a investment group that put that many eggs into one basket I would be thinking of changing investment companies.

 

[Bateluer]

Scheme to up the stock price?

 

[Aikouka]

this reads more like a sale of just the activision side and not blizzard

Pretty certain that any reference to "Activision" is actually talking about the whole company known as Activision-Blizzard. Vivendi owns a major stake in that combined company:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activision-Blizzard

Activision Blizzard, Inc., formerly Activision, Inc. (NASDAQ: ATVI) is the American holding company for Activision and Blizzard Entertainment. The company is majority owned by French conglomerate Vivendi SA and was created through the merger of Activision and Vivendi Games, announced on December 2, 2007,[4] in a deal worth USD$18.8 billion.[5] The deal closed July 9, 2008. The company believed that the merging of the two companies would create "the world's largest and most subtle pure-play video game publisher".[6] It believes that it is the only publisher that has "leading market positions across all categories" of the video game industry.[6]

 

[destrekor]

They may not be selling all of their 61% share, so it's not like anyone has to afford that entire stake.

this reads more like a sale of just the activision side and not blizzard

VIV has a 61% stake in Activision-Blizzard (the publicly-traded entity: ATVI). If Blizzard was to be sold off, it would technically be ATVI's decision and entirely under their own financial structure.
VIV simply is the controlling majority stockholder of the company. They could influence this, but they can't simply sell off Blizzard outright through the sale of shares, iirc.

VIV could simply be choosing to sell off 10%, remain in control of the company, but looking to cash in on some of their original stake. Or they could be looking to completely withdraw from the gaming market - something Vivendi could quite possibly be considering (they've moved in and out of markets like crazy, according to my very brief research just now ).

 

[LumbergTech]

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/201...king-to-sell-activision-blizzard/#more-111062

Maybe some execs at Vivendi played Diablo 3 and realized it was time to dump Blizzard.

I haven't played it yet, but everyone I know personally has liked it when they tried it. Even the guy who didn't like Diablo 2 back in the day said he was impressed with how well done the game is.

 

[Grooveriding]

I haven't played it yet, but everyone I know personally has liked it when they tried it. Even the guy who didn't like Diablo 2 back in the day said he was impressed with how well done the game is.

Subjective as always. All my friends from university I am still in touch with who played Diablo 1 & 2 can't stand Diablo 3, myself included. It's pretty novel seeing Blizzard finally release a bad game, but also disappointing. The game just has a lot of production value behind it, but none of the substance of the past games.

Blizzard's trouble is highlighted in some of the earlier discussion in this thread. The departure of Blizzard North gutted Blizzard of the core talent that contained a large portion of the group of people who created their successful franchises; Warcraft, Starcraft, Diablo and World of Warcraft.

The Blizzard North team was in large part responsible for the creation of all these franchises. Blizzard has been riding and iterating on their work and making bank off it ever since. They haven't made a new IP since. Diablo 3 is very close to the nearest thing they've done to a brand new game since then. It's quite different from the past games, and the gutting of their core creative talent shows in the poor quality of the game, imo.

I doubt their unnanounced MMO, Titan, will ever live up to the quality of their past creations. They've lost the people who were in large part the creators of all Blizzard's success.

Diablo 3 while impressive in release week sales, is a pretty lackluster title, release day sales were more an indication of the value of the Blizzard brand and the notoriety of the Diablo franchise. If you check out user reviews and popular gaming forums, including Blizzard's own forums, it is far and away the worst received game they've ever released. I think they are in big trouble in the talent department and are going to have to get creative when the well dries up of milking the same franchises they have been for the past 14 years.

The merger with Activision is not doing anything to help the quality of their games either. This is a company that aims to maximize profits, often to the point of bleeding the proverbial franchise cow dry and having to find another to kill off - see Guitar Hero and Tony Hawk.

People shouldn't have illusions about how things work now with Activision/Blizzard. Morheime, Blizzard's CEO, reports directly to Kotick. Kotick calls the shots. Activision behaves like a hit and run organization in gaming, they swoop in and monetize a successful franchise and milk it dry. That can't remain viable forever and they are vying against EA, who is out to do the exact same thing.

 

[Wreckem]

Doesn't Apple have something like $100,000,000,000 in cash on hand or readily accessible?

Not anymore. They are spending $45billion on dividends and stock buy back over the next 3 years.

 

[Wreckem]

Subjective as always. All my friends from university I am still in touch with who played Diablo 1 & 2 can't stand Diablo 3, myself included. It's pretty novel seeing Blizzard finally release a bad game, but also disappointing. The game just has a lot of production value behind it, but none of the substance of the past games.

Blizzard's trouble is highlighted in some of the earlier discussion in this thread. The departure of Blizzard North gutted Blizzard of the core talent that contained a large portion of the group of people who created their successful franchises; Warcraft, Starcraft, Diablo and World of Warcraft.

The Blizzard North team was in large part responsible for the creation of all these franchises. Blizzard has been riding and iterating on their work and making bank off it ever since. They haven't made a new IP since. Diablo 3 is very close to the nearest thing they've done to a brand new game since then. It's quite different from the past games, and the gutting of their core creative talent shows in the poor quality of the game, imo.

I doubt their unnanounced MMO, Titan, will ever live up to the quality of their past creations. They've lost the people who were in large part the creators of all Blizzard's success.

Diablo 3 while impressive in release week sales, is a pretty lackluster title, release day sales were more an indication of the value of the Blizzard brand and the notoriety of the Diablo franchise. If you check out user reviews and popular gaming forums, including Blizzard's own forums, it is far and away the worst received game they've ever released. I think they are in big trouble in the talent department and are going to have to get creative when the well dries up of milking the same franchises they have been for the past 14 years.

The merger with Activision is not doing anything to help the quality of their games either. This is a company that aims to maximize profits, often to the point of bleeding the proverbial franchise cow dry and having to find another to kill off - see Guitar Hero and Tony Hawk.

People shouldn't have illusions about how things work now with Activision/Blizzard. Morheime, Blizzard's CEO, reports directly to Kotick. Kotick calls the shots. Activision behaves like a hit and run organization in gaming, they swoop in and monetize a successful franchise and milk it dry. That can't remain viable forever and they are vying against EA, who is out to do the exact same thing.

Lets not get carried away, Blizzard North was only responsible for the Diablo franchise. Bill Roper on the other hand was Blizzard & Blizzard North(he worked for Blizzard well before Blizzard North(Condor) was bought. Blizzard went down hill before the Activision merger. Viviendi is whats cited by Bill Roper et al for leaving. Activision Blizzard still answers to Viviendi. As much as Kotick seems to be an epic douche Viviendi owns a majority control of Activision Blizzard. They also have control the Activision Blizzard Board of Directors meaning they can pretty much do what they please in terms of dictating what Activision Blizzard should be doing. That probably has something to do with his douchiness. Viviendi is the real problem.

But the time line for Blizzard North was, Diablo 1 - 1996, Diablo 2 - 2000. In late 2000 Blizzard North started work on Diablo 3 and worked on it until they were shut down and production on Diablo 3 was restarted by Blizzard proper in 2005. For the most part Blizzard North(other than Bill Roper who was Director of Blizzard as a whole) was not responsible for much of any thing else.

 

[Grooveriding]

Lets not get carried away, Blizzard North was only responsible for the Diablo franchise. Bill Roper on the other hand was Blizzard & Blizzard North(he worked for Blizzard well before Blizzard North(Condor) was bought. Blizzard went down hill before the Activision merger. Viviendi is whats cited by Bill Roper et al for leaving. Activision Blizzard still answers to Viviendi. As much as Kotick seems to be an epic douche Viviendi owns a majority control of Activision Blizzard. They also have control the Activision Blizzard Board of Directors meaning they can pretty much do what they please in terms of dictating what Activision Blizzard should be doing. That probably has something to do with his douchiness. Viviendi is the real problem.

This is true, Roper and Brevik were both part of the Blizzard North exodus though and played lead roles in Starcraft and Warcraft - along with Diablo.

Blizz North also had huge involvement in the development era of World of Warcraft with the first exodus occurring shortly before the launch of that game. Then after the launch of Burning Crusade what there was still left of Blizz North also departed the company for 'personal' reasons :whiste:

My pure speculation is that Blizz North, being the creators of Diablo, didn't like the plans for monetization with the RMAH and all the other sweeping changes we see in the newest installment. So they left. None of them have ever commented on it though and kudos to them for not slinging mud about the whole affair.

Most of what insider leaks and rumours on the subject say, is that Blizz North and Vivendi/Blizz Irvine did not see eye to eye on the direction the game was going to go. Blizz North being the actual creators of Diablo seem to have been shafted, hence why we now have a Diablo 3 that is so unlike what a Diablo game was in the past. The whole affair is very similar to what we saw Activision also do with the lead designers of the original Infinity Ward who created CoD 4. Exactly the same, they showed them the door, and kept the rights to their creation.

 

[Wreckem]

This is true, Roper and Brevik were both part of the Blizzard North exodus though and played lead roles in Starcraft and Warcraft - along with Diablo.

Blizz North also had huge involvement in the development era of World of Warcraft with the first exodus occurring shortly before the launch of that game. Then after the launch of Burning Crusade what there was still left of Blizz North also departed the company for 'personal' reasons :whiste:

My pure speculation is that Blizz North, being the creators of Diablo, didn't like the plans for monetization with the RMAH and all the other sweeping changes we see in the newest installment. So they left. None of them have ever commented on it though and kudos to them for not slinging mud about the whole affair.

Most of what insider leaks and rumours on the subject say, is that Blizz North and Vivendi/Blizz Irvine did not see eye to eye on the direction the game was going to go. Blizz North being the actual creators of Diablo seem to have been shafted, hence why we now have a Diablo 3 that is so unlike what a Diablo game was in the past. The whole affair is very similar to what we saw Activision also do with the lead designers of the original Infinity Ward who created CoD 4. Exactly the same, they showed them the door, and kept the rights to their creation.

Viviendi has always been the problem. They will always be the problem.

 

[MrRamon]

Look, all I know is that diablo3 sucks. The company took so much time to develop a game that is fail. There is not a single good thing about it compared to earlier installments. Hell, there is not even a battlenet lobby. Remember all the hype quite a few years back of battlenet interface going to own. Oh, there is no battlenet sry.

 

[Aikouka]

Blizzard's trouble is highlighted in some of the earlier discussion in this thread. The departure of Blizzard North gutted Blizzard of the core talent that contained a large portion of the group of people who created their successful franchises; Warcraft, Starcraft, Diablo and World of Warcraft.

WarCraft I and WarCraft II (and its expansion) came out before Diablo 1.

My pure speculation is that Blizz North, being the creators of Diablo, didn't like the plans for monetization with the RMAH and all the other sweeping changes we see in the newest installment. So they left. None of them have ever commented on it though and kudos to them for not slinging mud about the whole affair.

I doubt it. Some of the "dumbing down" was introduced far later into the development cycle, and I'm assuming the RMAH was also brought into it later as well. I would guess within the past two years, which doesn't sound long, but this is Diablo III.

 

[DeathReborn]

The only reason I can think of if this is true is they see the writing on the wall. A lack of talent, new ideas and franchises losing steam (partially due to repetition & partially long development times).

Ever since WoW and CoD 2 came out nothing they've put out has been as good as what came before. Even SC2 was gutted down to 1 campaign in order to sell the Zerg & Protoss at full price over several years. They've resorted to milking the cow and there's just not much left but skin & bones.