Activision Blizzard is a famous gaming publisher based in Santa Monica, California, US. Though the company is only 13 years old, it has its roots related to the leading French media conglomerate, Vivendi SE, and 40 years old video game publisher, Activision, Inc. The two companies are big names in their industry, and Activision Blizzard is the result of an $18.8 billion merger held between the two in 2008. In the merger, Vivendi merged its game publishing unit with Activision and held a 52% majority stake in the new company. But by 2015, Activision acquired Activision Blizzard completely.
A Brief Introduction
Though the journey of Activision Blizzard has been quite small, it has been able to break many records in the field of the gaming industry. The company is now counted among the largest game companies in the world. In fact, it was the largest company in America and Europe based on its annual revenue in 2018. As of 2020, the recorded company revenue for Activision Blizzard was around US$8.09 billion, and 9,500 employees are working for it.
Activision, Blizzard Entertainment, King, Major League Gaming, Activision Blizzard Studios, and Activision Blizzard Consumer Products Group are some of its subsidiaries.
The Founding of Activision Blizzard
Despite Activision was a famous gaming publisher, as time went by, massively multiplayer online (MMO) gaming was taking all the limelight around 2005-06 and had become really popular in a very small time. Activision was struggling to reach out to a larger audience as it was still selling single-player games. To deal with this situation, Activision went on to talk to the French media conglomerate Vivendi, which owned a small gaming division itself. The two gaming subsidiaries of Vivendi were Sierra Entertainment and Blizzard Entertainment, and Bobby Kotick, the owner of Activision, offered to invest in the latter to have access to Blizzard’s successful MMO, World of Warcraft.
On top of the offer, the CEO of Vivendi, Jean-Bernard Lévy, proposed to merge Vivendi Games with Activision on the condition of Vivendi keeping the majority stakes in the resultant company. Despite Kotick was concerned about his position in the new company, he knew that the merger would open new doors for it in the gaming industry. After proposing the same to the board of Activision, finally, on 9 July 2008, Vivendi and Activision together built Activision Blizzard. It was a US$18.9 billion deal, and Kotick was named the President as well as the CEO of the newly formed Activision Blizzard. Lévy holds the position of the Chairman of the company after replacing René Penisson. Even after the merger, the headquarters of the company remains in Monica, California, US.
Only after two years of its founding, the company became the largest video game publisher in the world. The company did not publish the titles under its name but used the name of its studios to release those titles. Call of Duty was the first and the most famous title published by Activision Blizzard. Almost all of its parts broke its own biggest launch records. The first part of the game was launched in 2009, and it grossed $310 million in a day.
In 2011, Activision Blizzard started its Skylanders franchise, the creators of Spyro’s Adventure. Activision paid a sum of $5.83 billion to the partner Vivendi and acquired 80% of the latter’s share in the company, bringing Vivendi to 11.8% of the ownership of Activision Blizzard. In 2016, Vivendi sold the rest of its shares to Activision, exiting from the partnership. This way, Activision took the company under its control completely.
The next famous title from Activision Blizzard was Destiny, released in September 2014. It broke the launch day sales record by bringing in over $500 million in retail sales on the first day of its launch. In November 2015, the company acquired the social gaming company King, the developer of the famous Candy Crush Saga. The company listed in Fortune 500 in June 2017.
Titles Published by Activision Blizzard
Call of Duty series, Crash Bandicoot series, Guitar Hero series, Skylanders series, Spyro the Dragon series, Tony Hawk’s series, Diablo series, Hearthstone Heroes of the Storm, Overwatch StarCraft series, Warcraft series, and Candy Crush Saga, are some of the most in-demand titles by Activision Blizzard.
The CEO: Robert A. Kotick
Robert A. Kotick is currently serving as the President and the CEO of the company. He was born in 1963 and is a native of the US. Kotick is a famous businessman, and it was from his childhood when he started to show the qualities of a businessman. He was in high school when he ran a business renting out Manhattan clubs on off nights.
In the early 80s, he joined the University of Michigan, where he studied Art History. He was still in college when he started a software development company called Arktronics. He became part of Activision when he and his partner Brian Kelly bought a 25% stake in Mediagenic (which later became Activision) in December 1990. The company was at the stage of bankruptcy at that time. Kotick is responsible for the restructuring of Mediagenic into Activision, and later, into Activision Blizzard.
Yashica is a Software Engineer turned Content Writer, who loves to write on social causes and expertise in writing technical stuff. She loves to watch movies and explore new places. She believes that you need to live once before you die. So experimenting with her life and career choices, she is trying to live her life to the fullest.