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The next WoW-killer?
Volkon
Member UncommonPosts: 3,748
Well... this could get interesting...
"All the newspapers and websites are abuzz with news of Vivendi and its plans to extract an insane amount of money from Activision Blizzard. The sum will turn out to be more than A/B actually has and will throw the gaming company into debt."...
Oderint, dum metuant.
Comments
Very interesting. Thanks for the link and heads up.
From the sound of the article, they will still have $1-2 billion in cash, they would just need to figure out how to move things around, as most of their cash is in offshore accounts (I am sure to avoid taxes).
The parent company may bleed them, but they won't hurt the current cash cow, BUT what it may do is screw them for their budgets on future games, like Titan that is getting reworked. When money starts to get tight, you take less risks, and are not willing to put money out for projects.
That's funked up.
"As you read these words, a release is seven days or less away or has just happened within the last seven days those are now the only two states youll find the world of Tyria."...Guild Wars 2
Oderint, dum metuant.
Based on title, I was going to post the usual, WoW is killing itself. But holy moly that is a bit of a Blizzard killer isn't it.
Sitting on surplus only to have the hungry poor decision making parent company come home and say, "gimmie". Sheesh.
I think every gamer would agree. Or hope they do...
This.
Just read up on their history, the 3 guys that created the company sold it for 6.75 million, and then it went through a few companies. Vievendi (sp?) owned Blizzard when WoW launched, so I guess they were the parent company, so they probably feel they have the right to redistribute the money. Activision merged with Vievendi (sp?) 4-5 years ago...So if anyone is probably getting screwed it is the Activision side of things, since the badly run part of the company is draining the part that Activision thought was worth merging with.
I remember now after reading up on this, how Blizzard floated around some, but for some reason, I forgot about it, probably because they have been printing money with WoW.
I never got into WoW, but I still play StarCraft and some other games of theirs. Will suck if they lose developmental budget money because of this, even though I didn't like WoW, maybe I would like something else they bring out.
Blizz probably would worth more by selling it whole, as opposed to pulling out cash and let it fail.
OTOH, last year, D3 sold 12M boxes .. that is $720M .. not even counting WOW or SC2. They can afford to pull some money out.
Sure, they can afford it perhaps... this time. What about next time, or the one after that? Besides, a company makes plans for the future based on available and projected available cash and debts. If Blizzard wasn't prepared for this leeching, well, maybe that's part of what happened regarding Titan getting pushed back, we don't know. If not, good luck to them ever creating it with the Vivendi vampire sucking the lifeblood from the Blizzard teat.
Oderint, dum metuant.
Who knows what happened next time? In business, no one can see more than a year anyway. Next year, may be Vivendi is doing better, and need no cash, or WOW will fold and Blizz is in trouble, or Blizz will have another hit, and more cash to share.
Better to focus on right now. Titan is not pushed back. It is going back to the drawing board (more like cancelled). Blizz does that all the time with games they don't think meet their quality of fun.
It puts Blizzard at risk of a scenario former coworkers of mine called "death by MBA". By forcing Blizzard to go from a pile of cash to high debt, the parent company is cashing out all the current value and essentially telling the management that shrinking down to the size of the remaining market is not an option - it's grow or die. If all goes well, players won't notice a thing. If all does not go well, a spiral of risk-taking and cost-cutting will escalate quickly.
Selling ATVI was their first plan but the offers were too low.
When this $3B special dividend initative passes, Blizzard will certainly not have enough working capitals to go along with all the old projects plus the several new F2P ones in the work. The weaker sisters (in term of future prospects) may face what their siblings D2 and Guitar Hero saw.
Guess who the share holders think are the weaker sisters in ATVI? Not that nobody warned before but the arrogant fanbois just refused to face reality.
This is a sore point with me. Beancounters ruining the economy and taking down businesses. Take research, beancounters cut funding to anything that doesn't seem like a quick payback or something certain to payoff in the long run. Anything else is cut. Year later, they find themselve unable to compete.
Worse is when these magament tricks are used and those at the top give themselves bonuses they should be ashamed of taking. Too much greed.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
I've seen this before in business and milking the cash cow too much too often can kill it pretty quickly. I hope it doesn't happen to Blizzard but the timing of this cash call given the agreement just expired doesn't bode well.
the pieces of the puzzle are slowly falling into place. One at a time.
I don't think that is why Titan is put on hold. I think Titian is put on hold (or rework from scatch) because traditional MMOs have run their courses.
from last year, July 2012
http://me.ign.com/en/news/2501/Activision-Could-Buy-Itself-Back-from-Vivendi
As news continues to emerge regarding the ongoing saga of Vivendi’s potential sale of Activision Blizzard, it now appears that the buyer could be Activision Blizzard itself. According to The Wall Street Journal, one option that Activision Blizzard and Vivendi have each considered is for Activision Blizzard to buy back all or part of Vivendi’s majority stake.
Since Vivendi acquired Activision Blizzard in 2008, the French company has held a 61% stake in Activision Blizzard, currently worth upwards of $8 billion (the total market value of Activision Blizzard is presently estimated at $13.4 billion). While Microsoft and Time Warner were among buyers approached about a potential sale, Vivendi was last reported to be finding ‘little enthusiasm’ in selling its stake and could instead opt to allow Activision Blizzard to reacquire its own stock.
Vivendi’s trouble selling the publisher is reportedly due to the fact that few companies approached have the cash available to find the $8 billion purchase.
EQ2 fan sites
Microtransaction brings more profits, that's one of the reasons but I think the bigger reason is realistically no mainstream businesses or gaming companies are in the market to buy subscription based games. Making their games F2P, or at least pretending to be F2P Blizzard gets a much bigger chance to draw the attention of some white knights or angel investors.