Entries in flying monocles (1)
Activision Didn't Value Blizzard In 1995
iTZKooPA on Tuesday, January 19, 2010 - Post a Comment Tags: activision, blizzard entertainment, flying monocles, industry news, kotick, mike morhaime, millionaires joking about money, monday quarterbacking, robert kotick 
In early December 2007 Blizzard Entertainment was part of a merger between Activision and Vivendi Games. The deal was essentially brokered to offload debt France's Vivendi SA had acquired, and give Activision something it severely lacked, a successful MMORPG. It worked, creating a total (estimated) transaction of almost $19 billion. In perhaps the most expensive example of monday quarterbacking, Robert Kotick, Activision's President and CEO, admitted to Game Informer that he believed Davidson & Associates was "insane" to pay $7 million, that's with an 'm,' for Blizzard back in 1995.
“That year Activision probably had 60 million in revenues. They said they paid seven million dollars for Blizzard. I’m like 'Are you out of your minds? They’re like a contract developer! They have Warcraft but what else do they have? You paid SEVEN million! That’s insane!
"I was talking to [Blizzard founder] Mike Morhaime the other day and I said, 'You know, I could have bought you for seven million and instead it was seven billion.' [Laughs]
He said, 'Yeah, could you imagine if I had just held out for the seven billion instead of the seven million?'”
You've got to hand it to Davidson & Associates for spotting this diamond in the rough. With only a couple of quality titles before Warcraft: Orcs & Humans (they were released under a different company name, no less) Blizzard was largely unheard of, let alone highly respected. Buy Blizzard it did, and D&A reaped the benefits for years to come.
Could you imagine if Blizzard wasn't given the proper time to execute on Warcraft II, Diablo, StarCraft or Battle.net. Or how meh StarCraft: Ghost would have been when it was forced to ship. I highly doubt BlizzCon would have ever of happened. Who knows if WoW would have even been created. And without WoW it's doubtful ProjectLore would exist!
My brain hurts. Time to stop contemplating the mass implications to our space time continuum. Let's just hope things remains solid going forward.
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