When did Activision and Blizzard merge? Was it a good move for Blizzard in the long run, discuss!?
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Wrath era
I feel certain that this discussion has been had enough times that there’s nothing positive to be gained by having it again.
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- Longer ago than many players have even played.
Yes. Activision-Blizzard is one of the largest and most profitable developers in the industry.
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Considering how everyone that made Blizzard godlike has jumped ship to make games elsewhere, the current state of their game design and job security, think we can rule this out as an objectively bad thing without much debate.
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Blizzard didn’t have a choice in the matter. It was already owned by the company that bought Activision and merged the two together.
People never seem to know or realize that the company under the name Blizzard has never owned itself. Mike Morhaime and his fellow cofounders sold the company to a larger corporation back when they were still Silicon & Synapse. They didn’t become Blizzard until after.
What you should be asking is was the decision to sell to to Davidson & Associates in 1994 good for the company.
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They never merged.
That’s what a lot of people get confused over - they see the name and assume they merged.
They did not.
In 1988 Activision renamed themselves Mediagenic and split off 4 companies under them , one of which was an “Activision” that published the games. Later on when Mediagenic wasn’t doing so good Bobby Kotick brought Mediagenic and the 4 companies under it in 1991 , renaming the former “Activision” Activision Publishing(the games company) . In 2000 Activision reorganized as a holding company calling itself “Activision Inc” (again with the 4 companies under it)
It was this holding company that merged with the then owner of Blizzard Entertainment , Vivendi Games. This merger was completed in July 2008 , they then renamed “Activision” , “Activision Blizzard” adding Blizzard to their name in honor of the future contributions Blizzard would make towards future profits for them.
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Good for share holders, horrible for literally everyone else. Activision sucked the life out of Blizzard. It’s a shame really.
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It was mid-2008, if I recall correctly.
Since it took place over a decade ago (and we have the benefit of hindsight), it’s safe to say the merger was really good for Blizzard, at least until the mid to late 2010s.
However, Blizzard is currently the weakest segment within the Activision-Blizzard corporation. It trails Activision and King in revenues. So, it’s difficult to say whether this trend will continue or if things will turn around.
Activision was purchased in 2007 by Vivendi in 2007. This purchase/merger was done at the behest of Robert Kotick. Activision was merged into Vivendi Games (which owned Blizzard Entertainment) in 2008. Activision/Blizzard was born in 2008 when Vivendi Games was renamed. Blizzard Entertainment remained a wholly owned subsidiary under Activision/Blizzard.
Was it a bad move for Blizzard… Probably in the long run. However, since Blizzard has had a corporate overlord since 1996, they didn’t have any say in the matter whatsoever.
Call of Duty is an absolute monster of a franchise…more than WoW ever was. WoW was and is extremely popular with its niche customer base, but CoD’s customer base is everyone who owns a playstation, xbox or computer.
KING thrives in the mobile game industry – candy crush amongst other titles. How many people have smart phones and are willing to pay for microtransactions across the world? a lot…
WoW is entirely limited to people who have time to invest in an MMO and want to do that. It’s potential audience is vastly smaller so quite honestly it does pretty good for itself. The only true comparison to give it would be against the financials of SWTOR or FF14 or something like that. so yea… Blizzard will always be behind the other two, but Activision’s strategy is quite brilliant from a diversification standpoint. They have their hooks in mobile gaming, platform gaming (CoD), and niche gaming (Blizz). If one business subsides or struggles during a time, the others balance it.
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it was in wrath of the lichking era. cata was already being made and its story and everything was planned when wrath was in its final stage of devolopment so everyone who hates cata are hating the same people who made wrathion tbc vanilla warcraft 1 2 and 3.
huh…well thats an interesting phenomena. lol.
The sub chart shows that about late 2008 early 2009 subs stopped growing…rode the wave for a bit then started tanking.
Timing might be a coincedence…but somehow I doubt it.
https://www.techspot.com/images2/news/bigimage/2015/08/wow-subscriptions-historical-2005-2015.png
It doesn’t matter what we call it the fact is the original core of Blizzard is long gone.
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They described the 30 year history of the company…
Of course the core is gone.
Personnel turnover happens a lot in the game development industry
Yeah, and some people stay with a company they believe in.
Blizzard is no longer the Blizzard of old it is plain and simple. They have been affected greatly by Activision.
The CEO has been with the Company for 30 years…so at least one person believes in Acti-Blizz
Can’t think of any long term game developers that have stay with one company for as long as WoW has been out…
Probably because WoW is the first major game to stay “live” this long.
Its really hard to make a comparison
This times 100
Left due to the vision and direction of Activision.
Bobby Kotick has been the CEO of Activision since the 90s and the CEO of Acti-Blizz since the merger
feels baity lol…
google it, it’s literally one of the first things that pop up.
and yeah it was fine, it was only the game publishing unit.
some more things happened years later and now this year one of activisions studios that worked on classic games has shifted to focus solely on blizzard games that accounts to 200 developers.
Most changes that have happened were really the devs so my beef is with Ion now lol