More information on the Activizzard merger
The strange timing of this massive announcement aside, details are starting to come to light about what the merger of Activision and Blizzard means to all involved. First, Blizzard has made an official announcement in their forums, followed by a separate post with a FAQ about the merger. The FAQ basically says absolutely nothing will change on the Blizzard side. No layoffs, no managerial changes, no ship date changes. This is no surprise since no one in their right mind is going to mess with the success that is the Blizzard name and the team behind it.
The official press release mentioned in our first post today is a bit dense on the corporate speak, but the interesting parts are:
The new Board of Directors will have 11 seats: 6 of those filled by Vivendi, 2 by Activision and 3 by independent directors from Activision's board.
There will be a live webcast with the management of the two sides tomorrow morning at 8:30am EST and can be viewed at www.vivendi.com and www.activision.com
The BBC site has a very good summary of the merger along with a brief background on both companies. And The New York Times site has a deeper analysis from a business perspective. It points out that Activision is trying hard to compete with EA Games and adding Blizzard will not only put its annual revenue on par with its main competition, but will give it a criticial foothold in the online gaming and Asian gaming markets.
Kudos to our own Art Orneck on the "Activizzard" reference. It sure beat out my "Blizzvision" for cleverness.
