Robert Kotick on regulatory criticism
From Activision Blizzard CEO on blocked merger: It was a flawed ruling in every respect · · CNBC Television
“It demonstrated to us is that these regulators, they don't really understand our business.”
On , Robert Kotick, Former Chief Executive Officer at ACTIVISION BLIZZARD INC, spoke about regulatory criticism during Activision Blizzard CEO on blocked merger: It was a flawed ruling in every respect on CNBC Television.
About Robert Kotick
In a July 2023 interview, Kotick discussed the pending acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft, noting that 98% of shareholders approved the transaction and describing it as a "great deal." He stated that the company extracted "significant additional value" through a short extension, a dividend, and a termination fee he characterized as one of the largest in history. Kotick expressed personal concerns about the economy, citing interest rate increases and a deficit substantially greater than GDP, and said he did not believe any business is recession-proof. He also identified Chinese companies like Tencent, ByteDance, and Alibaba, along with Nintendo, Sony, and Netflix, as major competitors in the video game industry. Earlier, in 2016, Kotick described the acquisition of King Digital, the maker of "Candy Crush Saga," as an opportunity to enter the fastest-growing mobile game market and to attract a female audience, noting that 60% of King's audience was female. In 2010, he stated that over 60% of Activision Blizzard's profits came from online-related games and described Facebook as a "great platform for gaming" that could grow to be significant over five years, though he noted it was then too small to influence the company's operating profit. He also said the company was "platform agnostic," aiming to make its games playable on any device with a display and microprocessor.