This deal could have changed a lot of things for fans of even more games and franchises...
Who didn’t play World of Warcraft and said to themself “this game would be so much better with expensive dark elf packs to be opened” or wished for even more pay-to-win-content in Call of Duty? Right, nobody ever did.
But a talk between former EA and Blizzard employees Bobby Kotick and Bing Gordon revealed how close a future like this could have been, with EA almost owning Blizzard and the CoD IP.
EAs Chance To Buy Blizzard, Guitar Hero And More
During a recent podcast episode of “Grit” Bobby Kotick sat down with the former Chief Creative Officer of Electronic Arts Bing Gordon, talking – not only – about how EA almost got its hands on Blizzard, CoD, Guitar Hero and other brands.
Microsoft wanted to purchase Activision Blizzard – formerly led by Bobby Kotick – in its entirety and EA seemingly had the offer on its table.
In the beginning of the Grit episode, Kotick called Gordon one of the toughest CEOs in gaming he had to deal with as a competitor. He also said that he and his team would have paid to keep the then-CEO in place at Electronic Arts while Gordon praised Kotick's notorious success.
After that, Kotick explained that not everything was always that easy and successful:
We actually had a bad acquisition. The company that was in Manchester that did the driving game for Xbox… We had a good guy who was running the day-to-day but he was like a brilliant guy, who — he was in strat planning. It was $80 million and like, we wrote it off two years later. Everything about it violated all our principles. That guy was an expensive lesson.
Kotick then talked about how EA tried to acquire Activision and Blizzard and Gordon explained:
While you were doing Blizzard, that EA passed on, and you were doing King, EA did PopCap — just stupid things.
Even though these revelations just happened during the first minutes of the almost two-hour long podcast, they are probably one of the most interesting, with Gordon and Kotick giving insights into the history of their companies.
What are your thoughts on that? Do you think EA would have done a good job with the Blizzard games or the CoD franchise?
