Tag Archives: vivendi

Bloomberg reports Activision Blizzard majority stake holder Vivendi has been denied a $1.34 billion credit line as lenders shy away from companies enmeshed in the Eurozone financial crisis. Vivendi has gone so far as to reduce its stake in one of the world’s biggest publishers to 60% in order to keep its credit rating high, but its overtures have been met with demands for interests rates 90 basis points above standard.

Thanks, GamePolitics.

Activision Blizzard’s majority owner Vivendi has sold off a portion of its stock, reducing its stake in the publisher to 60%.

More »

Vivendi, Activision-Blizzard’s majority shareholder, has posted its financial results for the first half FY11, and it finds the firm with increased revenues and earnings thanks to record digital sales of Blizzard games which are up over 20 percent year-over-year. The firm also noted that ActiBlizz bought back close to 43 million shares of its common stock for $479 million, leaving Vivendi with a 63 percent share in the company. More on Gamasutra.

Producer Chris Mahnken has blamed timing, tight schedules and management changes for the failure of Irrational Games’ Tribes: Vengeance, the critically-acclaimed game notorious for putting a nail in the series’ coffin.

More »

In this month’s issue of Game Informer, the mag sat down with Irrational’s Ken Levine to chat about Division 9 – a zombie shooter that was scrapped by the firm.

The game would’ve put players in the middle of a zombie infested environment complete with co-op gameplay, “scarce resources, base-building, and strategic rescues” to content with. Sound familiar?

More »

Activision plans to launch the ratings awareness program started by Vivendi in 2008, which will provide education and information to parents regarding children and the videogames they play.

Called The Ratings Are Not a Game, Dr. Cheryl Olson from the Center for Mental Health and Media at Massachusetts General Hospital will preside over the program, the purpose of which is to help parents make intelligent and informed decisions regarding games they allow their children to play.

“I’m pleased to partner with Activision on this initiative, and applaud their consideration for parents’ concerns,” said Olson. “As a parent myself, I know there are so many things to worry about and not enough time, especially during the holiday season.”

Also being used to promote the ESRB, seven videos based on different aspects of gaming are to be released. The first two will focus on using games to teach puzzle solving techniques, and how parents can identify age-appropriate games.

“These videos give practical research-based advice on how to help your kids – and your family – get more out of videogames, and how to watch for and limit electronic gameplay,” added Olsen.

Thanks, GI.biz.

Twentieth Century Fox has hired former Vivendi Games executive producer Andre Emerson as VP of its new video game production studio.

“Andre has a phenomenal background in video game production with a fair balance of licensing experience that will bring a wealth of knowledge and insight to our team,” said Gary Rosenfeld, SVP of Fox’s New Media. “We’re looking forward to Andre contributing his development expertise as we expand our presence in this space.”

Emerson, while at Vivendi, was in charge production on the 50 Cent franchise, and was most recently the executive producer for WET and Brutal Legend, along with being the writer and director for Dead To Rights.

More through Gamasutra.

Rebellion has revealed that it owns the rights to several Vivendi titles that were not developed by the firm.

According to CEO Jason Kingsley: Evil Genius, Ground Control, Empire Earth, and Lords of the Realm/Lords of Magic are now exclusively owned by the company with the rights to release new titles based on the franchises.

Each title was recently released on the GoG website under the Rebellion label.

Thanks, BigDownload.

Adam Roberts, formerly Vivendi UK boss, has moved to D3 as managing director.

“These are very exciting times for D3PE with Dark Sector shaping up to be one of the key action titles of 2008,” said Roberts. “A wealth of exciting new titles on both current and next gen over the coming months and a talented team will cement D3PE’s position as one of the fastest growing game publishers in Europe. D3PE will become a force to be reckoned, and I am delighted to be part of it.”

Action title Dark Sector’s doing the PR rounds at the moment, and we should have something on it for you soon.

Destruction has summarised Game Informer’s preview of the upcoming Ghostbusters games from Vivendi (Activision Blizzard, whatever), including this:

• There are two, semi-separate ghostbusting projects at this time, one for a Wii/PS2 release, the other, grander effort being saved for the 360, PS3 and PC.
• The big project is being developed by Terminal Reality, and has realistic graphics running on a proprietary engine. The focus is on the single-player campaign mode, and details about the multiplayer are still TBA. It doesn’t look good for we co-op PS360 enthusiasts, though.
• The secondary release on Wii and PS2, developed by Red Fly, is a slightly dumbed-down version that will focus on multiplayer, and has cartoony graphics instead of the main project’s realism.

There’s also news of a gun that fires double-ended “snot” laces for sticking across passageways and the like. The mind boggles. No release date on any of this yet, aside from “autumn 2008″.