Spooncraft

A group of investors are apparently planning to sue Activision regarding their recent merger with Vivendi Games, apparently saying that Activision didn’t do enough to cash in on the deal. They’re complaining that in the deal with Vivendi (Blizzard’s owners), Activision settled for an “unfavorable minority poisition.” The company hasn’t responded yet, but if this lawsuit goes forward, we could find out a whole lot more about the exact terms of the deal between the two companies.

And for their own part, Activision is thrilled to be in the business of Warcraft: Activision CEO Bobby Kotick sees MMOs as an “insurmountable product category,” and says that if they were competing with WoW, they’d have to toss at least half a billion to a billion dollars into the deal, and even then they wouldn’t be guaranteed success. Which means that at this time, in this market, Kotick says that companies entering into the MMO market are basically throwing money away.

Can’t say we’re surprised that the CEO of the company that now owns WoW says it’s unbeatable, but as you know by now, EA and Funcom (Warhammer Online and Age of Conan’s publishers, respectively) surely disagree. We should see who’s right by the end of the year. (src: wowinsider)

Thanks Mike for a great article. This is a subject that not many gamers will find all that interesting but it sheds a little light on the reality that even though this is the business of gaming; it’s still a business and when you have the amount of money 10 million acounts bring in on the table, you’re looking at some pretty serious figures.