I'll never forget his answer: "No one has figured out how to really make money with casual games yet, but once someone does, we'll just buy them."
The video game industry is largely moving toward the studio model used by Hollywood as a result.
As a result of that, it's a boom-bust company. A few bad releases can put them in trouble. Media is volatile because consumer tastes are fickle, and video games are no exception.
That has gradually declined of course, over a decade. They still have ~5.6 million paying subscribers to WoW, generate a billion in sales annually from it, and hundreds of millions in profit.
Games may have a longer shelf life than movies, but at the macro level, the same principles apply. EA and Activision are the MGM and Paramount of the games industry because they know and practice this. As unpopular as it may make them among industry insiders or hardcore fans, this is the way the hits business (as applied to conventional notions of a stable company) works.
Apple is far larger than Activision and are basically the kings of innovation.
And really, most of Apple's "innovations" are taking innovations created elsewhere and applying them to mass-produced consumer products. Not that what Apple does isn't innovative; but it's industrial-scale innovation.
Activision is a media marketing and investment company. Why bother being innovative when the mass-market AAA games they churn out earn $1-2 billion each in global sales? They're not trying to be innovative; they're trying to make mainstream video games.
I can't imagine that this deal will be profitable, but with profits at $604.5 million it is hard to argue that this deal should have been cheaper.