So while most people already knew about the big merger between Activision and Vivendi, today it became true, as they officially announced their merger was complete earlier this week. Activision now has complete control over Vivendi games and its sub companies, Blizzard, and Sierra Entertainment. Vivendi will be receiving 295.3 million shares of Activision common stock, as well as purchasing a separate 62.9 million shares at a stock price of 27.5 dollars a share equaling a staggering 1.7 billion in cash, making Vivendi the majority holder in the company owning about 54% of the shares. Needless to say there were more than a few stockholders celebrating recently.
A big congrats to BioWare on reaching over 4 million users in their online community, and yet they are still growing with an average of 38,000 new members every day. It seems it just isn’t enough for BioWare to be the leading gaming company with huge hitters like Mass Effect, Jade Empire, and of course The Knights of the Old Republic series, but now they are trying to lock in the market on their online community. BioWare is still a fairly young company, yet they continue to grow, and become a major power house in the gaming world. With these new numbers to their community it just proves that they will continue this track of greatness for years to come.
Strategy First Inc. announced today their newest PC strategy game, Galactic Dream: Rage of War. The game doesn’t have a lot announced yet, but it seems like it will be pretty close to a Star Craft type game as you are the Terrans who are ever fearful of an alien species called Argo, who is bent on universal domination (aren’t they always), and as Terrans you must finally take up arms and stop this force once and for all. To read up more about the game, or to even pre order already you can simply hit up the website: http://www.strategyfirst.com/en/games/GalacticDreamROW/ .
Simon Phipps, Designer at Criterion Games, decided to stop by the PlayStation blog yesterday and announced that Burnout Paradises newest Update was available via the PlayStation Network, anyone who owns Burnout simply pops it in to their PS3 and it will automatically update, this newest update will give you plenty of new game play options and some pretty hot new cars, an a successful attempt at keeping the game new and interesting long after its release. They also talked about the new Live page where people can see what’s up in Paradise City, as well as in the online community. I’m sure this isn’t the last we’ve heard as there will probably be many new updates to come.
