[Update/Clarification: IndustryGamers received a note from an Activision rep several days after posting this story. "Activision Blizzard didn't reorganize into 4 business units. It has two main divisions, Activision Publishing and Blizzard Entertainment. The Activision Publishing division has reorganized into 3 business units. Blizzard Entertainment has remained the same," he said.]
Original story:
Recently Activision Blizzard revealed in an SEC filing that it's shifting Thomas Tippl from CCO to COO, but that's not the only big change at the leading publisher. Although the company has yet to make any major announcement about it, Activision has quietly restructured itself into four distinct business units, the LA Times discovered after obtaining internal company memos.
We already knew that the Call of Duty franchise would be getting its own division following the Infinity Ward shakeup, but Activision has also decided to establish three other units at the company. A second unit will be devoted to handling other internally owned properties such as Guitar Hero and Tony Hawk, while a third unit will deal with licensed properties. The fourth unit, as you might expect, is Warcraft developer Blizzard Entertainment, which remains unchanged.
Along with the company reorganization Mike Griffith, who's been responsible for overseeing Activision's publishing business, has been named vice chairman. In this new role, Griffith will serve as advisor to CEO Bobby Kotick. "This is an important change as it will allow me, with Thomas [Tippl], to become more deeply involved in areas of the business where I believe we can capture great potential and opportunity," Kotick said in the memo to employees.
The new unit overseeing all licensed games will be led by Dave Oxford, who previously ran Activision's "value" or budget range of titles out of the Minneapolis office. As for the division running internally owned IP, Maria Stipp, executive vice president of owned properties, is now in charge of all titles (except Call of Duty and Blizzard properties). She'll also "be charged with fostering new brands that Activision hopes will drive its growth in the future, such as the upcoming racing title Blur," the Times report indicated.
These changes that began taking place last week resulted in about 15 layoffs at Activision, spokeswoman Maryanne Lataif confirmed. "We realigned our structure to better reflect our slate and marketing opportunities and direct our resources against the largest most profitable business segments," she said.
1 Comments
March 31, 2010
What about the layoffs that happened in their supply chain in February? Reason for the layoff was that Activision is not expecting to ship as many SKUs this year as they have in the past. Now how come nobody is talking about that? Not to mention that they paid pitiful bonuses this year. Maybe the 800lbs gorilla is more of a chimpanze.