Straight from the press release:

Vivendi to Contribute Vivendi Games Valued at $8.1 Billion, Plus $1.7 Billion in Cash in Exchange for Approximately 52% Stake in Activision Blizzard at Closing; Total Transaction Valued at $18.9 Billion

Activision Blizzard Will Commence Post-Closing Cash Tender Offer for Up to 146.5 Million of its Shares at $27.50 per Share, Representing 31% Premium for Activision Stockholders Based on 20-Trading Day Average

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Today on video game soup, from gossip like … gossipers department, alleged Gamespot employee weighs in on the recent firing of CNET GameSpot editorial director Jeff Gerstmann, for supposedly giving a low score to a major advertiser’s game.

Believe it or not, make your own conclusion, here’s the comment from Valleywag.com.

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This weekend, I decided to try out The Burning Crusade, for various reasons. Most importantly, I wanted to experience their expansion pack free trial process, see if we can learn something from it. It’s less than stellar so far, here’s what I had to go through (read: not pleasant).

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Reported by Virtual Worlds News, it’s currently rumored that the Wii incarnation of Animal Crossing would not only be online enabled, but leaning more towards the virtual world model. All signs point to yes so far, and I will be jump on the opportunity to play that. The WiiConnect24 capability is woefully under utilized with the party games craze on Wii. There’s so much potential and so many possibilities, bigger and more than the PC. By design/definition the Wii is way more accessible to the average users than the PC. MySims could have done that, but alas it didn’t.

I do hope though, by then we actually get official Wii keyboard support. Right now it’s unofficial/unannounced and only work in certain places.

Today is Blog Action Day, an initiative trying to get everyone to write about the same issue today on their blogs. So in observance of that, let’s talk a little bit about that. With the upcoming Metaplace project, it seems it would be quite possible to develop a serious MMO about the environment. The challenge, of course, is how to make it fun. Here are some bullet points of my ideas:

• Overall, a “you can control and change the world” theme, fun would be seeing your actions affecting the world
• Let you play as a meteorologist and study the globe every day
• Let players gather into “regions”, and let them decide on environment measures/ordinances, and then observe what’s the change over time (in an accelerated time line of course)
• Have “bad guys” try to find loop holes in the system and pollute the environment
• Let you be a farmer and experience how climate changes can impact your life
• Let you play as <insert animal> and experience how climate changes impact you
• Let you make choices about your every day life, and give you a report of how you have impacted the environment

That’s just some possibilities, like notes on a napkin. Now, someone go expand and make this because as I wrote the above points I am feeling that I want to play it

Gods & Heroes, which just entered Beta recently, has announced that they are being put on hold “indefinitely” (read: dead). You can read the official statement on their website, here’s an excerpt:

The Perpetual team is faced with a unique challenge of simultaneously developing both Gods & Heroes and Star Trek Online in addition to growing our Online Game Platform business. After assessing all of Perpetual’s opportunities, we have made the decision to put the development of Gods & Heroes on indefinite hold.

G&H has been in development for a few years now. It’s a shame that it’s being scrapped. I am not in the beta but concept sounds neat. There are rumors flying around as usual that Perpetual’s not being managed properly. But it’s really very hard to be a small studio and trying to put out two MMOs (I experienced it myself).

I am anxiously waiting for some juicy bits from F13.net

Dr. Randy Pausch, a huge proponent for game entertainment for education, gave his “Last Lecture” recently. He’s been diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer and only have three to six months of good health left. I have never heard of him before personally (there’s much in this world I don’t know). But after watching his special on Good Morning America, which highlighted some of his speech and some additional comments, there’s no doubt in my mind that our industry will lose a great deal when he’s gone. I am inspired and admire his courage in such situation. After seeing this, I guarantee you, your big problems won’t seem that big anymore.

You can view the whole lecture on Google. A transcript and other information are available on his university website. You can also read more about him on his Wikipedia entry.

Watch this. It’s brilliant. Much better than SOE spamming players in game this weekend about Legends of Norrath.