Activision missed opportunity to buy Blizzard for $7m
by Alexander Sliwinski 
on Jan 19th 2010 9:00PM
Activision CEO Bobby Kotick mentioned in a recent interview that he could have bought
World of Warcraft developer Blizzard Entertainment back in the mid-'90s for a mere $7 million -- instead of having to do that whole
$18 billion deal 12 years later. Speaking with
Game Informer, the
polarizing executive notes that during a dinner in 1995 he was shocked that another company bothered to buy Blizzard for $7 million. That year, Kotick says that Activision had about $60 million in revenue.
The executive thought at the time that his dinner companions were "out of [their] minds." In fairness, Blizzard only really had
Lost Vikings and
Warcraft in those relatively early years of the developer. It's actually Blizzard founder
Mike Morhaime who is probably kicking himself more (financially speaking) now, as Kotick relays that Morhaime told him recently,"Yeah, could you imagine if I had just held out for the seven billion instead of the seven million?'"
