Early Sunday, a surprising and still yet-to-be-approved merger between Activision and Vivendi Games was announced.

Vivendi Games (which owns Blizzard Entertainment, the creators of the uncannily popular World of Warcraft) will buy a majority stake in Activision to create a new company, Activision Blizzard.

Providing regulators and Activision shareholders agree on the deal, Vivendi will own 52 per cent of the entity, with Activision boss Robert Kotick crowned President and Chief Executive Officer. Vivendi’s head, Bruce Hack, will be CCO of the combined company.

The deal will combine the key franchises of Activision (that include Call of Duty, Guitar Hero and Tony Hawk) with Vivendi, (that makes…they do…well, they own Blizzard, which is a big deal. To give you an idea: Blizzard says they’ll make $1.1bn in revenue this year, $502m of which is operating profit).

According to the announcement, the combined company will usurp EA to become the world’s most profitable third party game publisher. The total transaction is valued at $18.9bn.

So what does a merger mean for consumers?

Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime told the online game rag 1UP that "Activision Blizzard" will be a corporate brand only, and not associated with any product.

So there shouldn’t be a "From the makers of World of Warcraft: Tony Hawk XXXVI," or "ActiBlizzard’s Wrath of the Lich King" on any game boxes.

That’s good news for Blizzard at least. The game developer has largely been left as a separate entity from Vivendi after its purchase — and done very well with the arrangement, thank you very much.

Blizzard moniker is likely being used solely to bring "star power" to the company stock. Blizzard also says there won’t be any management changes on its end as a result of the deal.

The widespread predictions of booming holiday video-game sales have turned out to be right on the money. And that means big bucks for retailers as well as game companies.

In the 3 1/2 weeks leading up to Cyber Monday, the video-game category that includes consoles and accessories jumped 134 percent in online sales compared with the same period last year. No other category was up more than 36 percent, and the consumer electronics segment increased a relatively meager 21 percent.

Those stats come from the Internet information firm comScore and cover Nov. 1 through Nov. 23 (Black Friday). There are no updated results yet for the rest of the Thanksgiving weekend or this week’s Cyber Monday, but comScore senior analyst Andrew Lipsman said he didn’t expect much change in the video-game pattern.

Although the surge can’t be chalked up to a single catalyst, the unceasingly feverish demand for Nintendo’s Wii console and DS handheld device is clearly the dominant factor.

Last week was the biggest in Nintendo history: More than 653,000 DS units were sold in the United States, plus 350,000 Wii systems. That surpassed Thanksgiving week in 2005 when 600,000 Game Boy Advance machines were sold.

In the case of the inventory-short Wii, consumers have encountered the maddening paradox that develops when a popular item also is the season’s hottest gift: Everybody’s buying it, so no one can find it.

Another factor is the increased appeal of Sony’s PlayStation3 since it was released in a $399 version. Sony reported a 178 percent boost in unit sales for Thanksgiving week, but didn’t specify what quantity that represented. Unit sales were up 245 percent over the previous year on Black Friday.

Still more explanations: an extremely strong lineup of recent console-exclusive games for Microsoft’s Xbox 360, plus the inevitable decision by some parents to shun traditional toys because of recall fears and switch to video and computer games.

Here’s one consequence for shoppers: Some of the hottest games could start becoming more challenging to find, if not as difficult as the Wii. Enticing games can sometimes help spur console sales, but a spike in console ownership guarantees additional game sales.

Industry analyst Edward S. Williams of BMO Capital Markets noted this week, for instance, that some versions of Activision’s "Call of Duty 4" and "Guitar Hero III" - both available for multiple game machines - were selling out during Thanksgiving weekend.

See what you think. Wal-Mart, for example, is extolled as "the largest single purchaser of 100 percent organic cotton products." Kohl’s is cited for "working to complete the largest rooftop solar project in U.S. history next year, with installations at 63 of their 80 California locations." And UPS is praised for operating "the largest alternative-fuel and low-emission fleet in the industry, with 19,647 such vehicles worldwide."

Team Xbox reviewed a bunch of new maps released just a few days ago but now they’ve dissappeared. There are essentially 5 new maps, and they all look good even if some of them are rehashes of old maps like Streets but they are not available on the Live download service - anyone know why?

There are many more Stealth Kill options this time around in Tenchu Z, which really helps to make the user feel more like a silent assassin with a slick repertoire of smooth skills. For instance there are times when bloodshed is actually detrimental to advancing in Tenchu Z, thus non-lethal combat is stressed. A noisy innocent bystander can still ruin the parade, so they can be silenced with a non-lethal choke hold. Of course those that want blood can draw it in many new ways with the revamped Stealth Kill system, including fancy unsheathed sword take-downs and flamboyant yet graceful slashes that off enemies with cinematic flair. Combo Stealth Kills are now possible if the conditions are right, and it’s even possible to maim through rice paper, from around a corner, or directly off of the ceiling of a room. Sweet.

Tenchu Z is primarily a one player mission-style game. It’s quasi-progressive, but the weak story elements and editing make it feel more like a Dynasty Warriors style affair of unrelated tasks. The ability to change the PC’s appearance in a create-a-ninja area is a nice touch, but the options are somewhat weak and the graphics fail to help it seem cooler to customize than it really is. It’s also possible to choose a partner-in-crime (male or female), but this again is hampered by too basic of a system of modification being employed. Sure, things get better as gold is acquired and new customization options become available, but we could have easily done without this feature and still enjoyed the core Tenchu Z gameplay. We do, however, dig the four player co-op System Link and Xbox Live action, as they help to Tenchu Z feel less like its predecessors’ standard, loner-style romps on the rooftops.

The gameplay of Tenchu Z is enjoyable for those that love the pace of a stealth game, but odds are you’ll have to work to look past some things in order to thoroughly enjoy the entire experience. One of these hurdles happens to be the graphics. Although there are a few decent instances of texturing and general artistry, Tenchu Z is not up to the normal Xbox 360 graphical standard. Clipping is a common occurrence, character animations are entirely too stiff (and still no sign of the circular body rotation leaving us) and background modeling far too basic. Even cut-scene visuals do little to make one of the most interesting periods in history seem enthralling.

When not fighting the graphics, you’ll be battling a chunky control scheme that won’t make many gamers feel swift or deadly. The aiming system for weapons is still hard to use and sword fights usually turn into games of trying to trick the A.I. into a loop rather than games of blade skill. You’ll also find this A.I. is easy to trick, and normally isn’t as reactive to Ki meter warnings as the H.U.D. suggests.

Surprisingly, Tenchu Z comes off “chunky” in general; the antithesis of what a ninja game should feel like- sleek and efficient. The concept is still golden, but the actual gameplay mechanics haven’t changed enough to really take advantage of such great material. There’s still a fair amount of entertainment value here, however, but be prepared to sift through some previous-gen-feeling moments to find those nuggets o’ ninja gold.

This was taken from an article I saw at Gamesindustry for everyones domestic benefit…Ubisoft boss Yves Guillemot discusses new markets, price cuts and why size doesn’t matter.

GamesIndustry.biz: In your speech

opening Ubidays last night, you said that this is Ubisoft’s E3 - that E3 is really for the US now…

Yves Guillemot: Yes, E3 has changed into a different show. It’s a totally different approach, moving from mid-May to July to present the games to the retailers and press.

E3 is not very much for Europeans any more, so we thought it would be better to create something that’s at the same time as E3 [was], for everybody.

What about other events like Leipzig, for example - will you be present there?

We will also be presenting at Leipzig. What we know is we have to have enough space to present the games, and Ubidays is good for that. So we’re going to have our event, and we’re also go to places where not everybody is going, but we can again see people that didn’t come here or want to know more about our products.

Ubisoft is making a big move into casual gaming at the moment. Is that because of the success of your strategy for the Wii? You offered seven titles for launch day, more than any other third-party publisher. Did that strategy pay off?

Yes, it paid off very well. We had 29 per cent market share in Europe on the Wii for the first four months after the machine launched, so it worked well. We realised there are lots of new customers very interested in completely different games.

We are fulfilling that demand. We have customers that want different games, and within the company lots of creators who have been asking us to do different games.

Isn’t there a danger that as more companies like Ubisoft move into casual gaming, the market will become more crowded? How will you compete?

I think as with all markets, what’s important is to have many creative people taking care of it, and working to produce innovative, quality products. You can never have too many high quality games.

The more we grow, the better the quality of these games will be, and we’ll respond to the demand from consumers.

Do you think some other publishers are trying to catch up with Ubisoft now? For example, some critics have said that Electronic Arts didn’t have enough faith in the Wii and should have committed more to it at the beginning. Do you think that’s damaged them?

No. When we saw the Wii and spoke with our teams about it, the reaction was very strong because most of our creators have been Nintendo fans since they were very young. When they saw the Wii, they saw they could create something different.

Now the machine is successful, so all the publishers are going to create for it. I don’t think being late is a problem - what’s important is to produce the best games for the machine.

Seeing as the Wii has performed so well, as has the DS, are you going to focus on those two platforms?

No. We will continue to focus a lot also on the other machines, but we now consider PS3, 360 and PC as one kind of machine, Wii as another one, and DS and PSP also as another one.

We differentiate the machines because we know the consumers are a little bit different. We can come with different brands and different experiences.

PlayStation 3 seems to be lagging behind in terms of sales figures - how concerned are you about that?

I think you’d have to ask them what is their plan for this year. I think they had a great launch, and we all know that after the launch it’s always slower because all the people that love the machine came and bought it on day one. Now it’s really Christmas that will tell us what the machine will do.

You hit the headlines recently for calling on Sony to cut the price of PS3…

I was just saying that in the last generation, we had machines that were at a lower price and they were selling more. It’s just something to consider for all the manufacturers, that the price of the machine has a huge impact on the number of machines sold.

Everybody has to remember that volumes are very dependent on price. I know the platform holders all know that, so now we have to wait for them to see when they want to achieve those numbers.

Do you think cutting the price before Christmas would be a good idea?

It depends on the volumes they want to achieve this year, on their policy. For publishers, we want as many machines sold as possible, so for us the lower the price the better.

[Sony has] sold a machine that is actually expensive to build at the right price for consumers. It’s just that if we want more consumers, we’ll have to have a price that will make more people come in.

How would you describe Ubisoft’s standing amongst third-party publishers now?

I would say publishers are really dependent on the quality of the games they launch. I’m looking at the industry in terms of segments of the market, and how publishers are performing in those segments. We are all more dependent on the quality of the games we do than the size of the company.

If you are strong segment more than another… If gamers like first-person shooter games, they buy the best ones. So it’s not the size of the company that counts, but how good that company is at creating games.

Is it a good time to be a third-party publisher?

Yes, because of all the innovations - the 360, Live Arcade, the Wii, the DS, PlayStation Home… I think all of these will expand the market a lot and as publishers, we’ll be very happy to share in that success