Two pretty major announcements hit the gaming press Friday. And they have the potential to pretty much completely change the gaming industry.
First off, Vivendi is selling off its majority stake in Activision Blizzard. It’s unlikely they’re going to find anybody to just buy the whole thing: AB is valued at $13 billion, and there’s a very, very short list of companies who could afford it and who would be interested.
That list is pretty much Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Disney. Out of those four, though, closing a huge deal like this seems possible but unlikely.
No, it’s more likely instead that Vivendi will just drain AB of all its cash (which it can do) and just sell the stock to all comers, making it a stand-alone company.
Secondly, Sony bought Gaikai, a cloud streaming game service, lock stock and barrel. So what’s that to you?
Well, it could mean anything from no longer having to download PS3 games to play them from the store to the next PlayStation being entirely cloud based. At the very least, a cloud based PS3 app is all but inevitable as Sony looks for an advantage over the 360.
In other words, the next couple of years are going to be very interesting for gamers.