EU approves the Vivendi - Activision deal.


French telecom and media group Vivendi won permission from the European Commission to merge its videogame unit with Activision Inc. in a $9.85 billion deal.

The complex deal will give Vivendi a 52 percent stake in a new industry giant called Activision Blizzard with annual revenue of $3.8 billion, rivaling that of Electronic Arts Inc., the world's biggest independent game publisher.

The Commission said for "all categories of game software, the combined firm would continue to face several strong, effective competitors, such as Electronic Arts, and the game console manufacturers, such as Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft".

Activision is riding high on the success of games such as "Guitar Hero", "Call of Duty" and "Tony Hawk" but has lacked an offering in the online role-playing area, dominated by "World of Warcraft" from Vivendi's Blizzard Entertainment.

This is great news for European CoD4 Gamers. Till now Europeans never could take part in any official Activision contest or sweepstake.




A few days back this got revealed :

Activision: European video games market worth more than US.


The SVP of Global Brand Management at Activision, Will Kassoy, said at the MI6 Marketing Conference that the European market is worth more than the US market. Kassoy predicts that the video games market is worth $10.4B in Europe, against $10.1B in the US.