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TEXT FIVE The bride andgroom, a guitar-wielding rock vixen and a muscle-rippling dragon-slayer, makean odd couple-so it is hardly surprising that nobody expected their marriage.But on December 2nd the video-game companies behind Guitar Hero and World of Warcraft , Activision and Vivendi Games respectively,announced plans for an elaborate merger. Vivendi, a French media group, willpool its games unit, plus $1.7 billion in cash, with Activision; the combinedentity will then offer to buy back shares from Activision shareholders, raisingVivendis stake in the resulting firm to as much as 68%. Activisions boss, Bobby Kotick, will remainat the helm of the new company, to be known as Activision Blizzard inrecognition of Vivendis main gaming asset: its subsidiary Blizzard Entertainment, the firmbehind World of Warcraft , an online swords-and-sorcery game with9.3m subscribers. The deal was unexpected, but makes excellent strategic sense,says Piers Harding-Rolls of Screen Digest, a consultancy. Activision has longcoveted World of Warcraft , and Vivendi gets a bigger games divisionand Activisions talented management team to run it. As well as making sense for bothparties, the $18.9 billion deal-the biggest ever in the video-gamesindustry-says a lot about the trends now shaping the business. The first isa push into new markets, especially online multiplayer games, which areparticularly popular in Asia, and casual games that appeal topeople who do not regard themselves as gamers. World of Warcraft isthe worlds most popular online subscription-based game and is hugely lucrative.Blizzard will have revenues of $1.1 billion this year and operating profits of$520m. World of Warcraft is really a social network with manyentertainment components, says Mr Kotick. | 
