universal-music-group posts

EU gives Activision-Blizzard a big thumbs up

by Samuel Axon Apr 17th 2008 at 9:00PM

Filed under: World of Warcraft, Fantasy, MMO industry, News items

After reviewing Activision-Blizzard's case for a few weeks, the European Commission announced its approval of the huge merger yesterday. The EU had final say approving the merger because Vivendi is a French company. Officials decided the deal wouldn't threaten the fairness of the market.

The commission made a statement, saying that Activision Blizzard "would continue to face several strong, effective competitors, such as Electronic Arts, and the game console manufacturers, such as Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft." There were some concerns that the company could have an unfair advantage in licensing music for games because Vivendi owns Universal Music Group, but they were set aside because "competing game publishers would continue to have access to a sufficiently large portfolio of music rights from alternative suppliers."

The lesson: Activision Blizzard is officially not a monopoly, thanks to EA. We could go into extreme detail weighing the pluses and negatives of the decision, but we've analyzed this merger plenty enough already. At some point, you just have to decide to sit back and see what happens.

Tags: activision, activision-blizzard, antitrust, approval, blizzard, business, corporate, ea, electronic-arts, eu, european-commission, european-union, merger, money, music, umg, universal-music-group, vivendi

Rock Vault brings heavy metal merchandising

by Tateru Nino Mar 5th 2008 at 9:30AM

Filed under: Horror, Launches, News items, Second Life, Virtual worlds

Officially licensed merchandise for twelve bands can be found at the new Rock Vault in Second Life. Avenged Sevenfold, Slipknot, Funeral for a Friend, HIM, Kings of Leon, The Ramones, Trivium, Iron Maiden, Bullet for my Valentine, Nickelback, Stone Sour, and Cradle of Filth are the bands represented, though not every one of them has inworld shirts to buy.

Whether there are inworld shirts or not (the price for all of them seems to be about L$150) each kiosk links to an online merchandise site where you can order the physical article. Don't go to to sleep quite yet, though. There's something much more interesting about this place than just selling tee-shirts -- thank heavens!

Tags: avenged-sevenfold, bravado, bullet-for-my-valentine, cradle-of-filth, demons, funeral-for-a-friend, him, iron-maiden, kings-of-leon, nickelback, rock-vault, second-life, second-life-places, shopping, slipknot, stone-sour, the-ramones, the-sine-wave-company, trivium, universal-music-group

Second Life content creators face genuine dilemmas

by Tateru Nino Feb 4th 2008 at 11:00AM

Filed under: Business models, Culture, Economy, Opinion, Second Life, Virtual worlds

Content theft has always been something of an issue in Second Life, though there seems to be less of it going on in per capita terms than in the physical world. That said, it is interesting to see Second Life content creators increasingly moved towards positions maintained by music and movie publishers in the physical world.

"Why would anyone walk into a store and spend 400 or 500 Linden on a dress, if they can get a dress of similar quality for free or very cheap from a reseller," asks Ziggy Quirk.

Tags: blizzard-activision, business-models, culture, economy, featured, james-dawson, linden-lab, microsoft, opinion, prada, rolex, second-life, universal-music-group, virtual-worlds, warner-brothers, ziggy-quirk