According to sources who wish to remain anonymous, Activision-Blizzard is no more. Activision's Bobby Kotick, after expressing private disappointment in the shrinking subscriber base of World of Warcraft, has engineered an intellectual property and stock swap with rival EA to acquire BioWare in exchange for Blizzard Entertainment. Hoping to capitalize on the remaining goodwill of the BioWare name, Activision has decided to rename itself "ActiviWare" with a merging of the two companies already similar logos.
Complete details of the merger swap were not disclosed, but EA's interim CEO has proposed an initial project to try to restore user's trust in SimCity after that property's recent launch problems by marrying some elements of the Warcraft universe into the next Sim installment, tentatively called, "SimCraft". Some of the ideas floated include mechanics similar to MineCraft, but using pieces of the Warcraft world with a Sim flavor.
Supposedly, Mike Morhaime has been in close touch with counterparts at Maxis for the last few weeks, but in major stealth mode. A skunkworks project may already be staffed.
ActiviWare has not given any specifics on future products to come from the new company citing the need to work out the administrative logistics of the more significant change and to run any ideas past the Call of Duty team before any major announcements. Some concepts in the works include "Call of Duty Age" to add more branches and RPG story to the Call of Duty franchise or possible "Skylanders of the Old Republic".
There you have it. Expect this story to break all over the video gaming world in the next days and weeks. Gamasutra supposedly has a mole inside EA with much more detail, but they were not ready to go to press until a couple of days in order to tighten up their sources.