EA Missed Out On Buying Blizzard & Some Big Activision Franchises, Says Former CCO

Activision Blizzard has some absolutely massive game series' under its belt these days such as Call of Duty and World of Warcraft, but they weren't always guaranteed to be ABK franchises. Speaking in a new interview on the Grit podcast, former Electronic Arts CCO Bing Gordon claimed that EA passed on some huge gaming IP before Activision picked them up.

Gordon namedrops Call of Duty and Guitar Hero as two series that went to ActiBlizz after EA decided against buying them - and the former EA exec even says the company had the chance to acquire WoW developer Blizzard at one stage as well.

"Call of Duty, Guitar Hero, and Blizzard, EA saw all those first and passed on all of them,"

Of course, Activision went on to purchase Blizzard in 2008, and that's when the ActiBlizz name was born. Funnily enough, this was also around the time that both COD and GH were going through incredibly successful periods for Activision - Modern Warfare 2 and Guitar Hero 5 both launched the following year.

While EA perhaps regrettably missed out to Activision on these big developers and franchises, in the end, Microsoft ended up playing the long game and coming out on top. In early 2022, the Xbox owner announced its intention to purchase Activision Blizzard - officially merging with the Call of Duty publisher in late 2023.

Do you think EA could have done a better job with any of these purchases? Talk to us about these hypothetical scenarios down below.

[source youtube.com, via gamespot.com]