Which would be interesting if Vivendi decides to hold onto Blizzard. Don’t get too excited though, according to Bloomberg, it’s currently only a topic of discussion for senior executives at Vivendi in their next meeting for reorganization efforts.
The publishing company behind Call of Duty may have begun to slow down a bit, depending on gamers’ continued interest in the twitch-shooting series. Having already shelved Guitar Hero, their current generation portfolio consists of only Crash Bandicoot, Skylanders (Spyro), and Prototype. Oh, and Tony Hawk.
New IPs like the one Activision is currently working on with Bungie may influence the keep or sell decision for Vivendi; especially if they are concerned about long-term business solutions and if it can be milked turned into a franchise.
I’d still keep Blizzard though. Despite all of the network shenanigans they’ve put us through with Diablo III, there’s still a lot of mooing left in the company.
Source:
Bloomberg
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This likely has absolutely nothing to do with Activision’s performance or concerns about it and more to do with getting some extra cash for Vivendi which has taken some pretty big hits in other areas. Been reading on this a little bit and like the article states selling will provide a lot of short-term cash. With a WoW expansion and new COD coming this year it interest in Acti Blizz will be high enough to get a lot of money. Vivendi’s shares in the company equal something like $13 billion so if they sell off their majority share they’re looking to rake in some good money.
You are correct in them wanting a short-term gain to appease shareholders, but I still believe Activision’s performance will be a key subject in the executive debates, especially regarding a long term strategy forecast. Whether they want to sell out and give a dividend to boost the main conglomerate’s own main stock is one option they’ll be considering, but there’s always the loss of Activision’s business and whether or not anyone out there actually wants to buy it at all.
That or take on some debt and… nah. I really not seeing this happening.
Anyways, I believe this only affects the Activision subsidiary, I’m not sure now why I even mentioned Blizzard.
Well technically there is no “Activision subsidiary” anymore. Activision and Blizzard are both owned by the Activision Blizzard holding company. If Vivendi sells their shares on the stock market they will all revert to the holding company. Vivendi bought a controlling interest in Activision and then merged them with Blizzard to form the holding company which they now own a majority share of. I don’t think they can just sell Activision itself anymore. It might have to be the entire holding company.
Huh interesting, I was under the impression they were still separate entities as Activision and Blizzard (now that I think about it, it’s probably just operational duties) being private labels that were under the holding firm Activision Blizzard which is in turn under Vivendi. Good to know.
So that means Kotick really is influencing Blizzard then?
Kotick is the head of Acti-Blizz but by all accounts Blizzard runs autonomously. That has always been a big deal for Blizzard though. Blizzard has never done anything that I would really point out as being “Activision influenced”. All of their steps really make sense considering where Blizzard has tried to go in the past.
They may all feel free to burn.