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Griffith: Activision Looking For Acquisitions, New IP
by David Jenkins
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March 4, 2009
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Activision is actively considering acquisitions of both studios and IP to fill in holes in its line-up and expand internationally, says Activision Publishing president Mike Griffith in a new interview.
"The combination of Activision holding a fair amount of cash and, presumably, prices being depressed not only for publicly traded companies, but also likely for new intellectual property licensing rights, should certainly create opportunities," said Griffith in an interview with Bloomberg.
Although Griffith refused to give any hints on more specific details of its plans, the company has cash reserves of $3 billion and no debt, which should accord it options. Nonetheless, the company plans to consider potential avenues carefully.
"We won’t rush to judgment just because we have cash," says Griffith. "We will be very disciplined."
After its merger with Vivendi Games, Activision Blizzard became by most measures the largest third party publisher in the world, but its portfolio of titles has so far expanded little from the merger.
Instead, the company dropped a number of Sierra-branded franchises such as 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand, Ghostbusters: The Game, Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena and Brütal Legend.
Activision Blizzard president and CEO Bobby Kotick later explained the decision by suggesting that the franchises did not "have the potential to be exploited every year across every platform, with clear sequel potential that can meet our objectives of, over time, becoming $100 million-plus franchises."
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I'm still perplexed by them dropping those titles mentioned that seem like potential hits - especially Ghostbusters, since they published the original on the C64.
seriously, a downloadable fighting game would be intersting; for instance you could do character and stage updates over several quarters and fund the time it would take to balance them. It would suck that you couldn't play all the characters immediately; but in some fighters people only play 2 or 3 characters anyway.
Acti-Blizz-Vi does have the money to try out a DLC model for a fighting game and they could probably do it well. it could also make for some interesting cross-overs, Scorpion v. dark-Templar or sub-zero v. lich king, cyborg v. point-man (FEAR 1, they have the rights to that character from the court battle right?).
...did they actually say EXPLOIT! This makes me lose respect for Activision for the first time. Way to BS and not support great upcoming games like Brutal Legend, Ghostbusters and Chronicles Of Riddick: Assault On Dark Athena.