Blizzard + Activision = Blactivisoin; the blaxploitation game publishing empire. It'd be more artistically interesting than Guitar Hero III.
 

Hey, it was Activision that gave us the cult classic Interstate '76, wasn't it?

You might not be too far off...
 

It means more to Activision than to Blizzard. Vivendi has owned Blizzard for some time, so this is more like "Vivendi Buys Activision".

Just more conglomeration of the video game industry... just what it needs. Sadly this will happen more and more as budgets have grown exponentially.

Next up: Atari buys Obsidian.
 

I can see what Activision would want with Blizzard (who wouldn't?). But my biggest question is what the value to Blizzard / Vivendi will be? While Activision may have a better distribution deal as a publisher than Sierra, I don't suspect that's the real reason for the merger.

What Activision has that Blizzard doesn't is console expertise. That's all I can see that makes this merger make sense for Blizzard, unless they want to take some Activision properties into the MMO space.

(And if I were Blizzard, I'd be very careful about considering any other MMO's, out of fear of diluting WoW. I'd only choose games radically different from WoW, or a location to appeal specifically to ex-WoW players).

I think if things keep going the way they are going, Obsidian might be in position to buy Atari, rather than the other way around...
 

Blizzard used to be in the business of creating (or at least defining) entire genres of games. Hopefully that's what "Hydra" will end up being.

The reason I'm worried about Obsidian is that the trend lately has been that no matter how successful of a independent game house you are, if you want to enter a new level of development, you'll have to sell out. See Bethesda for TESIII, Blizzard for WoW, Irrational for Bioshock, and Bioware for their MMO/future goodies.
 

I am just hoping for something to get Blizzard off its WoW butt and on to another single player RPG. While I prefer turn based, Blizzard is king of the hill on action RPG's in my opinion.
 

Blizzard is sitting on it's WoW butt instead of making a new RPG for a very good reason, which is that the RPG team is busy updating WoW. it takes a lot of people to make&maintain an MMORPG. the ones made by a single person or small group off people are very modest, poorly done, or have had an evil bug lurking in them for 3-4 months. or more than 1 of the above.