So Blizzard is creating its own Steam/Xbox Live/PSN...kinda

[Kenryoku_Maxis]

ph4nt said:

vlad321 said:
Maybe one day BLizzard will ditch the idiots that are Activision and join up with Valve for a super independent studio that is the bet in all major genres, FPS, RTS, RPG.

While legally Blizzard and Activision are one company. Activision has absolutely no effect on what Blizzard does / wants to do.

They said the same thing when Square and Enix merged.  And while the two companies tried to keep their IPs and the groups who worked on them seperate, the heads of the company have been making a number of risky ventures that are loosing the company money.

Even when the games development are kept seperate from the management, the mismanagement of the company can affect the sales of the games.  And, over time, can inversely affect the way the games are made.  As once again, we have seen with SquareEnix and their extreme focus on only 3 IPs (Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, Dragon Quest) and hardly touching or plain overlooking all their past series (Mana, Chrono, etc).

So basically, companies who enter mergers or get bought out walk a fine line between creative freedom and changes from new management.