That's a lot money. Well they'll get some of that back with CoD: Ghosts.

Holy damn, that's a lot of money.

I can't decide if this is a good thing or something that doesn't matter at all :/

LOL they're one hell of an indie company now. XD

More conservative is also a change isn't it? I've never crossed out that possibility but of course the opposite would be more spectacular.

I particularly wonder what they how can they react if CoD doesn't live up to the previous installments. Ghosts' pre orders when we go by VGC numbers aren't extremely encouraging, they are laging behind in the same time frame, there may be a bit of fatigue since it looks again more of the same. Also generational transition may be hard, there tend to be new trends with the start of the generation.

Also Destiny is a huge is a huge project, that I think isn't getting as much hype as they would want. Titanfall seems to be getting shit ton of hype both from gamers and critiques and I believe those games will be in big competition with each other.

DOTA2 will probably be very successful, maybe Activision part will try going for the F2P market.

Will they still go for the big AAA budget business model with a lot DLC, or introduce microtransactions. What will they implement in Destiny, since it's supposed to be a game for years. What will the WoW successor business model be, will they change the subscriptions to something else?

And lastly will they drop those shovelware franchises and stick to the big names since they don't have that much spare money? That seems plausible, but maybe they will try some diversity in case more CoD will not prove to the answer. And will they try to reboot some of the franchises that they took to the ground like Crash, Tony Hawk and so on.

A lot of interesting stuff to be determined here, but yeah overall I rather expect them to stay conservative in both games development and business model for better or worse.

didn't vivendi try to squeeze some billion out of activision to reduce their own debts? maybe activision thought "well, if you get our billion then only once"

€dit:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2013/07/22/vivendi-to-force-3-billion-special-dividend-on-activision-blizzard/

"Vivendi , which owns a controlling 61% stake in Activision-Blizzard, is set to discuss forcing a $3 billion special dividend on the American video game publisher at its board meeting Monday......

...."We believe Activision’s management prefers to use cash to buy back stock but it may not have a choice,” Sterne Agee Arvind Bhatia says.""

that was posted four days ago

It's not going to make any difference, except perhaps to make them a little more conservative about their games for a little while (due to the reduction in available cash). Let's not be under any illusions - Kotick was the guy driving Activision already, Vivendi was just the owner. All it does, in the end, is slightly increase his power, which won't make a whole lot of difference.

In the long run, it does open Activision up to a bit of a risk - if their current cash cows all fade, and they aren't able to create new ones, Activision may crash and burn in the long run; being owned by Vivendi provided a bit of safety from that possible end result.

Oh that's what Atlus should do with Index!

Vivendi is not a great safety net atm, they are $17 billion in debt and tried to pull $3billion from ActiBlizz's reserve to pay some of it off and maintain their credit rating.

Gamers may not be thrilled with Kotick but damn if he isn't a fine CEO - Vivendi was seeking action against ActiBlizz's best interest and swift like ligtning, he cuts and cauterizes the infected limb.

sounds great, now if only blizzard can buy itself back from activision we would be set.