Vivendi and Activision: An Overview

There's been a lot of talk recently about the biggest merger in game publishing history between Vivendi and Activision. To those who know these companies and what they represent, you'll know that this is ridiculously big news. There's been a lot of optimistic talk about how Activision Blizzard might be able to compete with EA.

(On a side note, I've never been a really big fan of EA. Although EA has released a lot of good games, they've released a disproportionate number of SHIT games recently. Their poorly optimized, multi-platformed, barely differentiated sequels have been getting more and more annoying. Not to mention the exclusive rights they have on sports games, which they repackage and sell with updated rosters EVERY YEAR for a full retail price is just a dick move by them. )

So here's what seems to be the breakdown:

Vivendi essentially equals Blizzard. But one other interesting fact is that Vivendi owns Sierra Entertainment, which in turn is the game publisher for *dramatic pause* VALVE. (NOTE that game publisher is different from game developer.) So essentially Vivendi has been in charge of publishing/distributing: Half-Life, Half-Life 2, Orange Box (TF2, Portal), the multiple iterations of CS (unfortunately CZ), the Warcraft Series (including WoW), the soon to be Starcraft Series, and the Diablo Series. I personally find that pretty damn amazing.

(NOTE again, Valve does not have any obligation to actually use Vivendi as a publisher as they are two completely seperate entities, and in fact Valve let EA handle the PS3 release. AND THE PS3 BUILD BEEN PLAGUED WITH PROBLEMS MAINLY WITH OPTIMIZATION. so HA.)

And then there's... Activision. Although their games might not produce as high review scores or hype as Blizzard's, they make up for it in sheer quantity of games released. This beast of a company has released over 100 games in the last 10 years (compared to Blizzard's paltry 9 games, 5 which were technically expansion sets). Some of their notable games include the Call of Duty series, the Quake series, the Tony Hawk's series, the Doom series, KOTOR and of course Guitar Hero.

And as IGN pointed out, they compliment each other nicely with Blizzard being PC-oriented and Activision rendering it's services mainly towards consoles. With their philosophies on game developing being so radically different, who knows what could happen.

SO. In conclusion, I guess you could say Activision Blizzard is in direct control over: Starcraft, Warcraft, Diablo, CoD, Quake, Tony Hawk, Doom, Guitar Hero, KOTOR and a huge number of other games. Although all these releases are in the past and it really depends on how Activision Blizzard can seize this opportunity to develop and publish new titles. There are still a huge number of other BIG publishers to consider like: Nintendo, Sega, Microsoft, Ubisoft, and Rockstar Games to name a few. Is it enough to challenge EA? My final conclusion after all this research? who knows. Really makes you think huh.

EDIT: Just wanted to say that Activision Blizzard confirmed Guitar Hero 4 and Call of Duty 5. - mkg