May 6th, 2010 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Companies & M&A | No Comments »
When Vivendi bought Activision to form Activision-Blizzard in July 2008, many expected Vivendi Mobile to become a dominant player in the mobile games space. Yet, the new entity decided to close Vivendi Games Mobile…
The reason for closing Vivendi Games Mobile was partly because Activision had a track record for licensing out their IP to mobile game developers like Mforma (later Hands-On, now Connect2Media). By licensing out the brands, the company had a fixed income while it didn’t need to take any real financial risks. Early November it shut down Vivendi Games Mobile US and two weeks later, Vivendi Games Mobile EU was closing as well.
Now, just over a year later, rumors are that Activision is planning to acquire Glu, something we mentioned as a possibility in June 2009 already. Rumors are fuelled by a few facts;
Blizzard has been hiring mobile developers small World of Warcraft projects as well as launching an April Fool’s day joke about mobile games they will develop.
At the same time, during the last earnings call from Glu, CEO Niccolo de Massi was sounding very euphoric when he said that Glu’s aspirations are to be the biggest and best mobile games publisher in the industry, soon. Though the distance between Glu and Gameloft is not that big, the distance to market leader EA seems to be huge. Activision-Blizzard is the largest gaming entity in the world and could boost Glu to that number one spot they have been fighting for, for so long.
We are not 100% sure on this acquisition, but our mailbox is stuffed with people asking about it and that is normally a good sign at least something is happening.
