OCT. 29, 2008 • Atari picked up the rights to two Vivendi Games titles not retained by Activision Blizzard. Going to Atari are The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena, and Ghostbusters. Both titles are based in well-recognized film licenses. Atari paid Activision Blizzard an undisclosed flat fee to acquire both properties. The former also penned agreements with Universal Pictures and Sony Pictures for franchise license rights for possible future installments.

Impact: Of course, it was widely known that there would be much cleaning house with the new Activision Blizzard.  The merger was really driven by Activision’s desire to get a hold of World of Warcraft and build a major online presence.  Outside of WoW, Vivendi Games had been on a steep decline and was losing money.  Atari is a B-level company, while the new Activision Blizzard clearly wants to focus on the AAA products.