It’s been a snowy weekend here in Vancouver, with little expectations in the way of fun or surprises. However, Vivendi Games (who owns my current employer Radical Entertainment) and Activision decided to stir things up a bit by announcing a merger of both companies and naming / branding the result "Activision Blizzard." I’ll spare you the "better name suggestion" comment and jokes.

Maybe they cooked it all up in 2 days just to piss off John Riccitello? Nah, he actually said "I think there will be more consolidation to come" so he still ok. Although he will surely make downplay the "we’re bigger than EA" message that surrounds the merger press release.

I guess tomorrow will be an interesting Monday at work, with lots of chatter and a few corporate emails about this. Kelly Zmak has so far been very communicative and open (within reason) about the business aspects of Radical. Other than a certain sense of being downplayed (along with other wholly-owned development studios) in the press releases in favor of the 80000-lb gorilla that is Blizzard, I don’t expect the new situation to affect our day-to-day life for quite a long time. A bigger muscle behind Prototype, but more games to compete with for marketing attention.

Meanwhile, Activision have put up a specific website to describe the merger; that’s pretty neat, even though it’s full of predictably corporate language. Both that site and Vivendi’s should be hosting a webcast tomorrow morning.