Vivendi &Activision merger - Interview incoming

Elly said:
I will be speaking with Mike Morhaime this evening so if you have any questions please let me know in this thread. If not, I'll have my own anyway.
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The New company is going to be called "Activision Blizzard" Clever huh?
Well its on the front page at Digg in 2 places now. I did find this little Q & A.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=3168513659&sid=1
Edit: Corrected Link and found another
http://blizzard.com/press/071202.shtml
Q: What will change with regard to the day-to-day operations at Blizzard?
A: There will be no changes in the way Blizzard operates. All of the people, processes, and philosophies that have made Blizzard so successful will be preserved. Blizzard will benefit from all-star sales and distribution teams to service our products. In addition, the combined company will be stronger financially, managerially, and operationally.

Q: How will this impact Blizzard’s games?
A: This will not impact Blizzard’s games. We remain committed to providing the same high-quality game content and support that we always have. Development on Wrath of the Lich King and StarCraft II, as well as on our unannounced games, is continuing as normal.

Blah Blah Blah... So what will this effect? Guess we will have to wait and see.

Conference Call and Webcast Information
The management of both companies will host a joint conference call and live webcast on Monday, December 3, 2007 at 8:30 a.m. ET, 2:30 p.m. Paris time, 1:30 p.m. London time to discuss this announcement. The companies welcome all members of the investment community to listen to the call live by dialing into (888) 765-5554 in the U.S. or (913) 312-1235 outside the U.S. The live webcast of the call can be accessed at www.vivendi.com and www.activision.com.

For those unable to listen to the live conference call, an audio replay of the call will be available through December 17, 2007, approximately two hours after the call's conclusion and can be accessed by calling (888) 203-1112 in the U.S. or (719) 457-0820 outside the U.S. and entering the pass-code: 5648597. In addition, a webcast replay also will be archived on the Investor Relations section of each company's website.

Activision Broadcast Media Center
Broadcast quality video and web-streaming video is available in PAL and NTSC formats on Activision's Broadcast Media Center at http://activision.pondserver.com. Pathfire users can download video to their Digital Media Gateway by choosing the Pathfire Enabled file. All video is free of charge and its use is unrestricted.


 
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BobCox said:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071202/ap_on_bi_ge/vivendi_activision;_ylt=AmBlGOvM2syHfPvaQY.eyyWs0NUE

What this will do to Diablo development is unknown but I can't see it speeding up the process.
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I think if Activision will have more influence on Blizzard then this is positive. I think if Vivendi sees what Activision does they may push Blizzard to follow. It is unexplainable why Blizzard simply chose to ignore such a hugely successful franchise as Diablo. In 2000 logic would dictate that we would have seen maybe several expansions and Diablo 3 by at least 2005/06. Yet here we are heading towards 2008 and no sign in the near future.

Now contrast this with recent news last week that Activision wants to have a Call of Duty title out each year. Infinity Ward refused to do one saying yearly development is too short. So instead they will have Treyarch do COD5 next year and IW will do COD6 year after. In the end Blizzard is owned and controlled by Vivendi who are certainly going to compare the revenue between the two. Could it be that Vivendi will order Blizzard to re-organize their game development? One could only hope so, as they are beyond illogical in the way they conduct business.

My hope is that Activision will have more influence on Blizzard to get their act together and begin development on Diablo 3. I can not think of any other game franchise that has been seemingly abandoned. Even Heroes of Might and Magic has been revived after the fall of 3DO. Hell's Bells, even a new Close Combat game was just recently released! It is pure economics that companies will milk a known title for all it's worth. One aspect that did strike me was in an article it mention how Vivendi wants to position themselves to take on Ubisoft and EA. To do that, you simply can NOT ignore a franchise like Diablo. Let's be realistic here, Diablo 3 would have huge sales. Unless the game was a complete disaster in quality it is a sure thing. From a financial standpoint it is a no brainer to release another D3, and remember the people who make these decisions look only at the $.

With that said, then I can only envision if Vivendi wishes to be on par with EA, for Blizzard's part they will soon have to revive the Diablo series ASAP. Why? Because a known franchise has a much better chance at success in terms of sales than an unknown. Add to that the hype and media attention that will come with it and you have close to guaranteed success from at least a financial standpoint. I think about the buzz and hype prior to the latest Call of Duty release.....buzz and hype that Activision did not have to spend any money on. Think about how much coverage D3 would get.



 
With Atari now being Defunct,wouldnt that make Activision the oldest Video company around to date?.I know they`ve been around since the late 70`s at least.





Imagines Pitfall Harry walkin around with a cane and long gray beard........
 
sbn said:
It is unexplainable why Blizzard simply chose to ignore such a hugely successful franchise as Diablo.
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Some history may help clear this up. Diablo was originally being produced not by Blizzard itself but by a company called Condor. Blizzard bought out Condor and it was renamed Blizzard North. They were responsible for the Diablo series as we know it. In 2005 Blizzard North shutdown, the employees split basically 3 ways, the lead Diablo developers formed their own company, Flagship Studios, which just put out Hellgate London, a game many have deemed "Diablo 3", another large chunk of Diablo developers made another company and the remaining employees moved to main Blizzard hq and remained working on an undisclosed project

We know from recent interviews that Blizzard has at least 2 unannounced projects under its belt and given the circumstances think its entirely likely that they are in fact working on Diablo 3, however losing such a large chunk of the dev team was an obvious setback.

Here's the thing about Blizzard though. Blizzard doesn't make good games. They make amazing games. They make games throngs of people still play 7 years later, they make MMO's which dominates the market controlling ~50% of the whole MMO market and boasts over 9 million subscribers, more then 4 times their closest competitors. There is simply no way to produce that caliber of game in a year, or two, or sometimes even five. Blizzard will absolutely not release a game if it's only solidly "good", we see that with the cancelled SC:Ghost project. They will revise, polish, and even scrap and restart from scratch, taking years and years to make a great product rather then release something mediocre.

At the end of the day, that's how I like it and why I love Blizzard. I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that every single game I pick up that has the Blizzard label on it will be 100% amazing and I'm willing to wait for the quality. You can't get Filet Mignon at McDonald's, and I'll wait for my Filet Mignon.

My concern is that this merger will do exactly what you want it to do and speed up their development cycle and force them to push out mediocre games. Let them run things the way they always have, let them have their time and they will continue to make amazing games, force them to release earlier... and I don't know I really want to see the result. When Diablo 3 finally comes out, and it will, you're right it's too valuable a product to not release, I want it to be a game I'm still playing 7 years from then, not something I put down in 3 months, and that kind of game takes time.


 
What I really wanted to know was what this does to Blizzard IP. Sure this might not be changing Blizzard's games, but will we be seeing games in the warcraft, starcraft, diablo universes that are created instead by Activision Blizzard?
 
props for the link. i liked this part
I'm going to slide this question in here. How will this impact the development of Diablo III?

*cough* That's very funny

Well it was worth a shot ;)

*Laughs*
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