Vivendi Games announced Sunday it was acquiring controlling stake in Activision by purchasing 1.7 Billion in stock. In whole the deal is reported to be worth 18.9 Billion.

This makes Blizzavision (Not their real new name, but should be) bigger then Electronic Arts. Which has long touted itself as the Biggest Publisher of Video Games in the World. I remember that well because it was on every other piece of orientation material they handed to me when I began working there. I’m not working there anymore.

Even though this deal means a lot more oomph as far as marketing and product property goes. I’m not sure it’s going to mean it’s as powerful as EA for awhile. EA being brought up to it’s size from the beginning as one large company acquiring allowed it to absorb the data, technology, and human resources in a more clean manner. When working at EA I used to spend hours after work looking at documents in their knowledge database that they made available to all employees from different studios. These were on varying topics and most were particularly in depth.

The amount of information available was staggering. Not only from all the studios but backwards in history too. I came across a document that explained sprite sizing and how to simulate speed with only 2d graphics routines written by one of the graphic programmers for Road Rash 3 for the Sega Genesis! That game came out in 1994 but this relic of a document was alive and accessible in their system. It was like Google for game creation. On top of that, if I read something which I didn’t understand, I could easily contact an individual on the team if not the very individual who wrote the document for clarification. As most game teams have someone who still works at EA. This sort of organization and accessibility can only come from a lot of effort over time. I don’t know if this can be achieved by a merger of two huge players. Not in the near future by any means.

Blizzavision may have the large size now but internally I’m curious how they’re going to tie things together so this merger has positive benefit as they move forward.