Written by Patrick Mulhern  on December 11, 2007

Special: Like five Transformers connecting into one mega-Transformer.

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Blizzard Entertainment
Although Blizzard is much younger than Sierra, they managed to get a bit of history going before being brought under the Vivendi umbrella. Initially, the company started off as a completely different organization, in name and product. Founders Michael Morhaime, Allen Adham and Frank Pearce started the company as Silicon & Synapse in 1991 and focused on porting titles for various platforms until 1993. With Interplay as their publisher S&S released Rock N' Roll Racing and Lost Vikings for numerous platforms in 1993, their first original properties. S&S briefly changed their name to Chaos Studios in 1994, only to find out the name was already taken, settling on the now famous name of Blizzard Entertainment. That same year Davidson & Associates purchased the company for approximately $10 million and together they released their smash PC/Mac hit, Warcraft: Orcs and Human before the year's end. Blizzard quickly followed up that success with a proper sequel, Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness in 1995 and later published the expansion, Beyond the Dark Portal, developed by Cyberlore Studios.

In 1996 Blizzard Entertainment and the rest of Davidson & Associates, including Sierra, were purchased by CUC International. From this point on the business transactions mirror that of Sierra, although Blizzard's history has one key difference, no matter the company that owned them, Blizzard managed to stay autonomous and maintained its credo of quality products. Lucky for them, the California-based studio had almost none of the troubles that Sierra and its original founders went through. During these tumultuous years for Sierra, Blizzard continued to produce hit titles, making a name for themselves with new franchises such as Diablo and Starcraft, while expanding their flagship series, Warcraft with the Battle.net edition of Warcraft II in 1999, followed up by a full-blown sequel in Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, and the current western MMORPG leader World of Warcraft.

Although the firm has had continued success to this day, it has not been without its minor setbacks. Blizzard Entertainment nearly completed two separate titles only to cancel them at the last minute, citing quality control issues. Warcraft Adventures was to be an adventure title set in the Warcraft universe but was canned due to lack of innovation. Blizzard managed to get a large portion of the title's storyboard into Warcraft canon via the various novels and World of Warcraft lore, stopping the project from becoming a total loss. The same can't be said for Starcraft: Ghost, which was Уindefinitely postponedФ in early 2006 after being in-development hell for some time. That particular title was so close to completion that Blizzard had already released a tie-in novel, Starcraft Ghost: Nova, a few months before the cancellation of its tie-in video game.



The company has also seen some internal changes largely stemming from its ownership under Vivendi Universal. As the giant-conglomerate struggled to stay profitable in the new century they began looking for potential buyers for their software division, Vivendi Games. Numerous employees of Blizzard became upset with the constant instability and decided to strike it out on their own. Roughly seven studios spawned during these years touting former Blizzard Entertainment employees as members of the newly formed studios. So far only four of the studios have released their freshman title, the best known being ArenaNet with the Guild Wars MMORPG franchise. Flagship Studios, founded by numerous members of Blizzard North, creators of Diablo, released Hellgate: London last October and continue to work on Mythos, a free MMO. Other studios include the developers of Daxter and the God of War PSP game, Ready at Dawn Studios, Red 5 Studios, Castaway Entertainment and Carbine Studios.

Despite the loss of talent, Blizzard has remained a bastion of success and profitability, purchasing many development houses after working with them on key titles, such as Condor (Blizzard North) and Swingin' Ape Studios (Blizzard Console). Today, the company remains the forerunner in the RTS and MMORPG genre as it tries to break out into new fields with the newly formed Blizzard Console. The desire for creative expansion may very well be what contributed to the Blizzard's support of the merger.

Reasons Behind the Merger
At this point, discussions of the merger have been beaten to death between Q&A sessions with Activision, Blizzard and that guy on the street corner, but most of these simply commented that Уthe quality of our titles won't change,Ф for better or worse. Some gamers out there are surely wondering just why the hell did these companies bother merging at all? The fact is simple really, it just all made business sense.

Another point that has been beaten to death is that Vivendi Universal had been shopping Vivendi Games for years, trying to lock in a secure deal that would see them injected with all sorts of cash. On the back of the incredible success of World of Warcraft all this talk disappeared and the game began turning a small investment into a treasure trove of cash each quarter. Currently, and by rough calculations, World of Warcraft pulls in $1.4 billion a year in subscriptions alone. That is enough money to make almost anyone profitable, let alone a hot commodity. Rather than continuing to shop a branch that is pulling in such a large sum Vivendi went looking for a company to purchase to round out Blizzard's offerings. To be brutally honest, of late Sierra Entertainment hasn't been the money maker of the pair and probably just road shotgun on the deal. Vivendi found that company in Activision.

Although both companies are quite large and well-respected, their portfolios barely overlap, something business people salivate over. For starters, Activision is almost non-existent in the RTS and MMORPG genre, which is all that Blizzard Entertainment really does these days. On the other hand, Sierra Entertainment and Activision do have some franchises that one could argue target the same demographic but, and this is a pretty big but, Sierra has stayed largely to the PC and publishing side of the business while Activision is a console company that develops, creates and publishes their IPs. Anyone who has taken a business class out there can certainly see that this is the most bare-bones, non-business mumbo-jumbo dissection ever (who really wants to read about beta distributions anyways), but it is enough to show that Vivendi Games buying a 51% stake in Activision and merging their software division into the new company will make both companies better and more profitable on paper, and with extremely little overhead.

Future Endeavors
Despite people's hopes and dreams we probably won't be seeing Guitar Hero: Warcraft Edition anytime soon, although I would love to see Thrall shredding with Kel'Thuzad as Arthus ripped up vocals. In all the Q&As that have happened since the merger the respected individuals said that business operations as usual. The newly crowned Activision Blizzard will simply be a working company with the Activision and Blizzard brands remaining in tact, separately. Therefore one should not expect to see any mention of Activision in the upcoming World of Warcraft expansion or Blizzard's name on various upcoming Activision titles.

What we can certainly expect in the future is more franchise releases. All parties involved have made tons of money from brand extension so it will certainly continue. The first press release by Activision Blizzard even stated that Guitar Hero and Call of Duty should start seeing annual releases beginning with Guitar Hero IV and Call of Duty 5 (although it should be noted that those franchises saw annual updates well before the merger). Therefore GHIV and CoD5 should be available to gamers sometime next year. Blizzard has made a name for itself on the back of three properties, Warcraft, Diablo and Starcraft, and as any self-respecting RTS gamer knows, Starcraft II is already well into development.

After reviewing the companies and their current portfolios it seems that one may expect the most change to occur at Sierra Entertainment. The company does have some popular franchises of its own such as SWAT and Ceasar but they only control four development houses as of press time, which can only handle so much. With the releases from Sierra slowing down in recent years we may see more titles coming out under their label with help from one of the many top-notch Activision first party development houses. Wouldn't an Infinity Ward developed No One Lives Forever sequel be mind blowing? Another exciting synergy that could be gained would be some serious Blizzard Entertainment exposure on consoles via collaborative efforts of Blizzard Console and Activision's various California-based development houses. Or they could use that Internet thing to work together over much larger distances, say a Blizzard Console/Bizarre Creations hook-up.

Regardless of the past or present the merger should be approved in early 2008. Electronic Arts, who is used to being the #1 third-party publisher/developer worldwide has already said that they would love the challenge, and that competition forces them to be more innovative (*cough* or buy exclusives rights to things you can't innovate *cough*) so EA seems ready for a fight. Hopefully, what all the presidents of the various companies have stated for the future come true. Most employees are hoping that their won't be any radical changes in corporate structure. While at the same time gamers are praying for a constant stream of solid hits without unusual cross-branding or depletion of a franchise's quality. Then there are the stock holders, bartering with the business gods to enable Activision Blizzard to really become the most profitable game company on Earth.