This sounds like a reach, but stick with me.
Splitting from the “Activision Blizzard” holding company can open you up to new opportunities to bring people back and make people interested in your game again by throwing activision under the bus.
Everyone hates activision, saying “Activision was a mistake” then deeply analyzing how to fix the core game design issues while removing every single activision plant at blizzard will bring peoples trust back.
Doesn’t sound like a reach.
Vanilla through WoLk development was without Activision and have been seen as quality content before they could just reuse assets. Activision Blizzard gave us cata, wod and bfa.
And how exactly do you think that is even possible. Activision and Blizzard were combined together in a merger under the holding company of Activision Blizzard, to even do what you are saying would require insane amounts of money to buy their way out and a willingness of people within the Activision Blizzard umbrella to let go of it.
It isn’t like this is some loosely based partnership or like Activision’s numerous dev studios under its own umbrella. This is a flagship dev studio of the holding company. This would be like Activision Blizzard letting go of the Activision part, same idea.
I can’t understand why it’s so complicating for people to understand that Activision didn’t create this absolute failure of an expansion that chased your friends and guildies away, Ion and Friends did.
Stop blaming Activision, Activision didn’t prune your abilities and add RNG and Warfront, Blizzard does.
Activision Blizzard has five operating units:
Activision develops, distributes, and publishes deeply immersive interactive entertainment for gaming consoles, mobile and tablet platforms, and PCs, including blockbuster franchises like Call of Duty ®, Skylanders ® and Destiny ®.
_Blizzard Entertainment develops, distributes and publishes some of the most iconic entertainment experiences in gaming, such as World of Warcraft ®, StarCraft ®, Diablo ®, Hearthstone ®, and Heroes of the Storm ™, for PCs, mobile and tablet platforms, and consoles. _
King Digital Entertainment creates leading interactive entertainment for the mobile world. With more than 200 fun titles, King’s franchises include Candy Crush ®, Farm Heroes®, Pet Rescue®, and Bubble Witch ®.
_Major League Gaming builds on Activision Blizzard’s competitive gaming leadership by creating all-new ways to deliver best-in-class fan experiences across games, platforms and geographies. _
Activision Blizzard Studios makes original film and television content based on our library of iconic and globally-recognized intellectual properties.
I listed this so that people could at least understand Activision Blizzard’s corporate structure.
https://www.activisionblizzard.com/about-us
They also gave us MoP and Legion
Honestly, I don’t care about the politics. I just want them to make a good game
I don’t know why BfA turned out the way it did, or Cata or WoD. Whatever the reason, I want them to recognise that it’s unhealthy for the game and I want them to take measures to stop it from ever impacting WoW again
That’s all really
If only this was possible.
Well I’ve heard that a lot of the people that run Activision also ran Atari…
I am quite happy that Atari failed tbh, because after Pac-man died, well we got Nintendo/Sega aka the classic games of my childhood, not to mention Sony after that.
So I would suggestion that Activision/Blizzard keep doing whatever it is they doing, go bankrupt like Atari did, because as the Old Gods say, when one falls, many will rise and take their place…
See, chances are, they screw themselves over completely, and then some new, epic amazing game comes along…I’m not worried tbh.
Because IMHO it could potentially break Blizzard.
See Blizzard’s parent company is Activision Blizzard.
So one of splitting off the company could be buying a majority controlling share of ATVI stocks.
There’s 2.4 billion of them. By my math that would require over $60 billion to get a 55% share of ATVI. That’s more then Disney made in 2017.
So (1) who has that kind of cash ?
(2) Those that do is it better the devil you know then the devil you don’t?
(3) What kind of debt will Blizzard be under if they do this ?
No one would ever be willing to financially support this move anyway, it is just absurd to even suggest it.
Is it better to die right then and there with a chance of not dying than to slowly die a painful, agonizing and certain death
Well first off, again this would suggest that Blizzard Entertainment could ever find enough financial backing to ever pull it off in the first place, technically possible but improbable.
As for Activision Blizzard, they won’t die, at least not anytime soon. I mean granted no company exists forever but it would be some huge economic event that would take them out or a massive shift in technology in which Activision Blizzard failed to to ever capture and that rendered them obsolete. The only thing I could think of would be something out of Ready Player One where some company makes a Virtual World on that level that takes the world by storm and renders other forms of entertainment pointless.
Ten Cent are worth $500 billion so they might.
And that comes into the whole “better the devil you know then the devil you don’t” thing. Who would be better … Activision Blizzard or Ten Cent ?
The holding company wouldn’t die, sure.
Blizzard Entertainment, the entity under the Activision Blizzard holding company might die, but it might not die.
If it remains under the holding company, it will die.
From what I’ve heard from some people I know through some people who work at Riot, tencent doesn’t seem nearly as oppressive and allows much more freedom than from what I’ve heard through former blizzard employees posting online than activision does
This is of course, ancedotal and you’re free to dismiss it as such, but they honestly might be better
Playing armchair investment banker are we? It could be done without saddling Blizzard with a ton of debt. If the parts were worth more than the whole, in other words if the big guys thought Blizzard wasn’t being valued fairly in the ActiBlizz stock price, ActiBlizz could spin off Blizzard but hold X% of the shares. Then over time sell the shares like Vivendi did. Or do something but not quite like what EMC and VMWare.
No it won’t. Those IPs of Blizzards are gold mines. They could make phone games using those IPs and make tons of money. The soul of the company might die but then again this is America, that is to be expected.
Well it would still be essentially under another umbrella, I think people think they can buy their way out and be independent.
I actually have some stocks in activision blizzard, I deeply regret not selling after the diablo immortal announcement
Anyhow, this is less about “investment banking”, but more “armchair PR expert”
That makes a lot of sense.you are a wise one my friend
How much do you want to bet that Destiny’s next installment turns out to be better than what was released during their stay with activision? It’s obvious that Bungie thinks so, or they wouldn’t have invested the huge sum required to buy back their rights from activision. IMO this marks the beginning of the end for activision, especially if Bungie prospers as a result of their seperation. You don’t wake up one day and decide to sever ties with your publisher (Activision) and partner yourself with NetEase for no reason. Blizzard doesn’t have to ride the sinking ship all the way to the bottom. I also agree with previous posts in that the quality of the content released for the World of Warcraft has indeed become poor since the relationship with activision started having an effect on it’s development. This isn’t me just ‘picking’ on activision either, but rather observation. I was recalled to active duty during Wrath of the Litch King, and didn’t resume playing again until Battle for Azeroth was released. I have leveled a few characters from 0 to 120. The richness and depth of the content after WotLK is lacking in so many areas. Professions for example might as well just be removed from the game at this point if this is how they are going to continue to be developed. Story lines and quest lines as well, have little to no satisfaction when compared to pre-activision content.
Lastly, there would be no need to release a classic version of the game if development had been done properly. People wouldn’t be wanting a way to go back to a time when the game was still good. If it had been done properly, the game would still be good.
If Blizzard decides to release an Xpack for Classic they have what few companies ever get, a second chance. So remember all the developers you fired because their vision didn’t put your shareholders above content design and subscribers? You’ll be wanting to bring some of them back (the one’s willing to speak to you anyway) because, as it turns out they were correct after all and were the soul of what made Warcraft feel like Warcraft.