Blizzard, owners of Warcraft are merging with Activision, owners of... some stuff... umm.. ooh, they make a lot of the Star Trek Games, oh, and Guitar Hero. I'm sure they do lots of other things too but they're the only ones that come to my mind.
Combined, they're still smaller than the industry giant EA, but both Blizzard and Activision have solid fan bases and very very very lucrative franchises (WoW being chief amongst them), this merger is certainly setting them up to take at swing in EA's league. It will be interesting to see what happens to the Blizzard franchise set though - in the past, Blizzard have stood their fans by not messing with a good thing. Over the last 13 years (13ish?), they've sported only 3 main brands (Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo... and Starcraft is really just Warcraft with a a different backdrop), which they've not messed about with because the fans have loved them as they are. Activision on the other hand are more the 'Let's do something completely different' kind of company, experimenting with hardware and game types, putting a new title on every production. While the franchises will no doubt remain independent in many ways, in time, we might see a joint ethos shape their attitudes closer together.
To read more:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7123582.stm
http://blizzard.com/press/activision-faq.shtml
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Phil
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