Thank WoW for the Activision-Vivendi Merger
By Chris on Saturday, May 31st, 2008 at 7:12 PM PST In Activision, Age of Conan, Blizzard, Computer, Game Companies, Game Platforms, Games, Games Industry, Vivendi, World of Warcraft
Speaking at the D: All Things Digital conference this week, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick painted a clearer picture of exactly what motivated the merger between his company and Vivendi. As you might have guessed, the motivation was precisely what seems to be driving a large chunk of the industry: World of Warcraft.
“We kept looking at it, and realizing that even if we put hundreds of millions of dollars of capital towards it, and had the very best intellectual property, we still would very likely be unsuccessful,” Kotick explained.
“So the merger was really our mechanism to get access to Blizzard’s talent, Blizzard’s capability, their infrastructure, from the multiplayer matchup standpoint, from a multiplayer gaming standpoint, but also in areas we would never have had an opportunity to participate.”
It’s certainly a smart investment, in my opinion. As Ron recently talked about, even Age of Conan — with as successful a start as it’s off to — isn’t much of a threat to WoW’s market dominance. So while it might have taken quite a lot of capital for Activision to make this happen, at least they can feel fairly safe in believing they’ll be #1 for the foreseeable future.
via Gamasutra
Blizzard just owns, WoW owns too