Jason Hill Writes:
"Video gaming's new publishing behemoth expects one in every four games sold this Christmas in Australia will be an Activision Blizzard product.
Activision Blizzard was established on July 16, but yesterday marked the formal completion of the merger of Activision and Vivendi with their product portfolios brought together under the one roof, including the popular Guitar Hero, Call of Duty, Crash Bandicoot, WarCraft and James Bond franchises.
The new company boasts it is "the world's most profitable console and online games publisher", with a market value of over US$23 billion and global annual sales of over US$4 billion.
Activision Blizzard is currently holding the Activate Asia Pacific conference in Auckland New Zealand to demonstrate its Christmas line-up to media and retail representatives from the region, and Managing Director Philip Earl made the bold prediction that the company expects a 25 per cent market share this festive season thanks to the likes of Call of Duty World at War, Quantum of Solace and Guitar Hero IV.
Next year's offerings from the company should include highly anticipated PC strategy title StarCraft II, the sequel to one of the world's most enduringly popular games.
Screen Play caught up with Blizzard vice-president and co-founder Frank Pearce at the recent Games Convention in Leipzig to chat about progress on StarCraft II."
