Bad news for the house that Call of Duty and World of Warcraft built, as mounting debts and falling share prices have fueled rumours of Vivendi selling their games division in the near future. Rumour seems to be slowly building into fact, as Vivendi is apparently testing the waters to seek those who could fit the bill.
The ultimate goal is to gain about $10 Billion USD from selling Activision-Blizzard. Currently companies that could manage that are Time Warner and Tencent, which the company teamed up with to make Call of Duty as a free-to-play online game in China.
Another particular party could be Microsoft. A banker source stated:
They probably don’t want to distract themselves too much, but they are the ones who, if they want to stay in games, would think about owning some of these big franchises, not just providing the consoles.
Anything is possible at this point, but there’s no doubting the lengths Microsoft would go to for exclusives.
Source: GamesIndustryBiz