Vivendi Looking to Offload Activision Blizzard to Microsoft?
It’s no secret Vivendi has been looking to sell their 61% holdings in Activision Blizzard. News broke last week about this, and today we’ve learned that the French media conglomerate has hired a bank to look for potential buyers of the $10 billion stock. So who could afford pick up the thriving videogame publisher? Analysts seem to think Microsoft, Time Warner and Tencent (Huge Chinese conglomerate).
$10 billion is a lot of money, even for all of these companies, but the reason why Microsoft seems such a perfect fit is because of the extreme boost having Call of Duty as an exclusive franchise would be. Already many consider the series a 360 exclusive, but having it be true is something else entirely. Also, everyone knows that Blizzard is the most successful PC-exclusive developer in the world, and since Microsoft just so happens to be the world’s largest software supplier with Windows, having Blizzard support only future versions of Windows is very enticing. Just imagine the one-two punch this would be not only for the Xbox brand, but also for Windows-based PCs.
At this point in time all we know is that Vivendi is looking for potential buyers, but we have no clue who will actually end up with the company. What say you?
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This would have serious consequences for everyone in the console space. I mean just imagine how Sony would feel if this were to happen. How could they combat a move this big? Call of Duty is one thing, but just think of all the other games Activision pumps out each year.
The truth is though that going exclusive would seriously limit the amount of profit Activision makes. These guys pumps out thousands of smaller games each year, stuff on PC and mobile that none of us even know about. Let’s not forget their countless DS titles, etc. Suddenly all of those games would go bye-bye.
At the end of the day it will prove to be an extremely interesting story to keep track of.
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I would be disappointed if that happens. It would suck for me as a gamer if Call of Duty was exclusive to Microsoft as most of my online buddies are Sony players. From a business perspective, Microsoft would be at a big advantage here if those franchises are exclusive.