• The New York Times, Wednesday, December 5, 2007 12 PM

Robert A. Kotick, who will be CEO of the newly combined Activision Blizzard, faces an industry in transformation as gaming explodes in popularity and moves to the Internet and phones. Now that he has brought Activision out of the shadow of Electronic Arts, analysts question whether he can keep pace with that juggernaut and become a magnate himself--or even the face of the industry.

Analysts say Activision, now an industry darling based largely on the performance of the Guitar Hero series, still needs a broader portfolio of enduring game franchises. But they tend to give high marks to Kotick, the longest-running CEO among the major game companies and an inveterate businessman. "I started out from the beginning with an expectation we'd be the No. 1 game company," Kotick says, referring to his start at Activision in 1990. "That's what I intend to build."

Michael Pachter, an analyst with Wedbush Morgan Securities, says Kotick has taken a disciplined approach to running Activision, almost in the spirit of a packaged-goods company like Procter & Gamble. "They run the company like a business," Pachter says.

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