Activision-Blizzard-MergerThe past few months have seen quite a few Game developers switching up how they do things. First you have Bungie splitting from Microsoft, Then you have Bioware going to EA. Now something happened that I never would’ve expected. Blizzard merging with Activision.

Why would Blizzard merge with anyone? I can understand the Bioware deal, Bioware is a well respected developer but they have pretty much been a contract developer as of late, making exclusive games for Microsoft. But when you look at the Bungie deal, they wanted to get away from Microsoft because they want to do their own thing, due to the success they have been having from a game they created (the halo franchise). Of coarse they didn’t take Halo with them, but they have had the experience and success in creating a AAA franchise that can maintain them as a company, and figured they don’t need Microsoft to do it again.

Blizzard is in a similar situation, except they have IPs that they have created that have been successful. The Diablo franchise, Starcraft, and the wildly popular World of Warcraft where they have about 9 million subscribers worldwide. Why would a company raking in that kind of dough merge with someone? I don’t know but It looks like maybe Blizzard wants to get in on the Console action, being that most of their games are PC based.

For Activision, its easy to see the reasoning behind it. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of that World of Warcraft money machine? This merger also puts Activision more on track to compete with publisher powerhouse EA. The one thing I keep thinking about when people are talking about Blizzard’s success with WOW is how about 9 years ago, another MMORPG franchise looked like it was unstoppable, and is for the most part forgotten now (Everquest).

The new company will be called Activision Blizzard.