Activision and Vivendi Games to merge
(http://www.activisionblizzard.com/)
In a surprise deal over the weekend, moves have been made to creates the world’s biggest publisher, called Activison Blizzard
(worth a total of $18.9bn) in the most surprising news of the year, Electronic Arts has been dethroned as the games industry’s biggest publisher, ousted by a new company formed following the merger of Activision and Vivendi Games.
The two companies said that the massive power-shifting deal will create ‘the world’s largest pure-play online and console game publisher’ – a company called Activision Blizzard, which will boast the highest operating margins of any major third-party video game publisher.
Creating the goliath company brings together a raft of Activision’s properties, including Guitar Hero, Call of Duty, the Tony Hawk series and a range of licences that includes Spider-Man, X-Men, James Bond and Shrek, with Vivendi’s slate of games which includes Blizzard’s world-popular World of Warcraft and its Diablo and StarCraft stablemates and the likes of Crash Bandicoot and Spyro.
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