TEXT ONE

The bride and groom, a guitar-wielding rock vixen and a muscle-rippling dragon-slayer, make an odd couple—so it is hardly surprising that nobody expected their marriage. But on December 2nd the video-game companies behind “Guitar Hero” and “World of Warcraft”, Activision and Vivendi Games respectively, announced plans for an elaborate merger. Vivendi, a French media group, will pool its games unit, plus $1.7 billion in cash, with Activision; the combined entity will then offer to buy back shares from Activision shareholders, raising Vivendi's stake in the resulting firm to as much as 68%.

Activision's boss, Bobby Kotick, will remain at the helm of the new company, to be known as Activision Blizzard in recognition of Vivendi's main gaming asset: its subsidiary Blizzard Entertainment, the firm behind “World of Warcraft”, an online swords-and-sorcery game with 9.3m subscribers. The deal was unexpected, but makes excellent strategic sense, says Piers Harding-Rolls of Screen Digest, a consultancy. Activision has long coveted “World of Warcraft”, and Vivendi gets a bigger games division and Activision's talented management team to run it. As well as making sense for both parties, the $18.9 billion deal—the biggest ever in the video-games industry—says a lot about the trends now shaping the business.

The first is a push into new markets, especially online multiplayer games, which are particularly popular in Asia, and “casual” games that appeal to people who do not regard themselves as gamers. “World of Warcraft” is the world's most popular online subscription-based game and is hugely lucrative. Blizzard will have revenues of $1.1 billion this year and operating profits of $520m. “World of Warcraft” is really “a social network with many entertainment components,” says Mr Kotick.

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