Activision Blizzard and the days of yore

Oh, if only we all had time-traveling DeLoreans and mint copies of Gray’s Sports Almanac – then we too could go back in time and place big bets on all of history’s unlikely winners. It appears that the mind of Activision CEO Bobby Kotick has been susceptible to exactly such flights of fancy – while speaking with Game Informer, the gaming exec reminisced on the 1995 acquisition of Blizzard by investment firm Davidson & Associates.

At time time, Kotick remembers being dumbfounded by the price the then-small developer got: “That year Activision probably had 60 million in revenues. They said they paid seven million dollars for Blizzard. I’m like ‘Are you out of your minds? They’re like a contract developer! They have Warcraft but what else do they have? You paid SEVEN million! That’s insane!” Fast forward 12 years and Activision merged with Vivendi Games to form Activision Blizzard, a move that cost the gaming giant a cool $7 billion. If only Kotick could see Blizzard’s bright future way back when, during the days when the original Warcraft was the only iron in the developer’s fire.