Vivendi acquires Activision - $18.9 *BILLION*

Does this mean we'll be seeing a Guitar Hero mini-game quest in an upcoming World of Warcraft patch?

 

no, but it means we'll start seeing smaller developers gobbled up by either this new giant or EA. Take Two is one group who has been rumored to be in the crosshairs of EA, and they already own like 24% of ubisoft.

 

Premier games are becoming more expensive to market and develop, so this isn't a very surprising development. It's a lot like the movies where it's more acceptable for a big company to take on that kind of risk. Smaller companies might not survive a bad decision, and even a storied company like Squaresoft was basically crippled by the failure of the Final Fantasy movie (they were later absorbed by Enix).

The good news is that it's also becoming cheaper to make other types of games, and now that downloadable content is becoming prevalent on next gen consoles, it will become even easier for small developers to produce more games. They won't be able to compete with the big boys in terms of graphics and such, but they can still be more entertaining.

 

maybe an MMO Call of Duty or something