"Activision Blizzard shares have dropped following reports that parent company Vivendi is considering selling it off later this month."...

"According to Bloomberg, Vivendi will discuss the part or full sale of the Call of Duty and World of Warcraft house during an investor meeting on June 22, as the Paris, France headquartered company considers what to do with its 61 percent stake in Activision."

Gamasutra

Not a fan of sales talk or Activision but I figured people might be interested in this so...yeah...thanks to Raptr.com for the story

O.o Why would they sell them off? I dislike Activision-Bliizard immensively, but I can't see a financial reason to get rid of them...

Really only one company that can buy them outright with no consequence

edit...well 2

So does that mean Activision-Blizzard will be a Nintendo first party? Crazzzzzzzy.

I wonder if they would be able to split the company up, undo the whole Activision-Blizzard thing

No Nintendo ATVI will not be a Nintendo first party.  Activision/Blizzard is worth 13.5 billion, they will want a preium for being bought which will raise the price by another 3-5 billion which will make it out of reach for Nintendo who is currenly worth 15.9 Billion.  Even if nintendo were to pay all cash (they have about 10 Billion), they will still be 50% short..  The company doesnt even fit Nintendo overall stragedy so their shares will most likely fall.  It would have to be a merger of equals.

Activision on the other hand can go acquire other firms like EA or TTWO, or Ubisoft since the company is bigger.

Microsoft can buy them outright, so can apple.  Thats about it.

This isn't about Activision's financials or viability. It's that Vivendi's losing money in other businesses and Activision isn't doing much for them so is a good candidate to sell.

I think they will just sell their stake (52% of ATVI shares) to the market , as it's unlikely any company has both the cash and the willingness to purchase them.

Microsoft wouldn't be a good fit because EA Sports has to produce games for all major platforms under contract.

That's fine though... if MS bought them, they could still make plenty of titles exclusive. Bioware being 360 exclusive again? Also, owning EA would mean that they could force games to develop primarily for the next Xbox first, and so the PS3 has the slightly inferior multiplats, like in the beginning of this generation.

I doubt MS would buy them, but if they did, they could certainly use it to ensure the Xbox's domination next gen... But it would be a lot to spend for that goal...

I don't think the antitrust agencies would let any first party buy actiblizz.