Were there any tensions during the negotiations? The price? The amount of influence Vivendi will have in management?

There wasn’t any real tension. I had an extremely long history with Blizzard. The fact that we’re so philosophically well aligned made the deal easier to accomplish.

Guitar Hero is huge—with more than $1 billion in sales since it was introduced in 2005. Essentially, it lets people play along on a fake guitar to real songs. Given that the Universal Music Group is part of Vivendi, will any special emphasis be given to its songs and artists?

By 2006, Activision had scooped up RedOctane, the makers of Guitar Hero. The acquisition cost $100 million, but resulted in $820 million in revenue in 2007.

One of the big benefits will be access to the Universal library. Guitar Hero takes an artist to a whole different place in the popular culture right now. Downloads on iTunes take off. The artist’s relevance and importance to 17-year-olds change in a way that you could never get in any other medium. Forty percent of its users are women. The age appeal is something we’ve never seen before—seven-year-olds who have no idea who Aerosmith is are playing the band’s music on Guitar Hero. So are 45-year-olds who spent a good portion of their lives following the band around.

Where do you take the idea next?

It’s not just about guitars. We’ll include a lot of other instruments, vocals. It will help us expand internationally. It’s the first game we’ve had in which we can use local content and local bands.

What else is in the works with other games?

Let’s take Wii. There are opportunities to add to the physical experience, whether it’s guitars or the Star Wars game—in which you have a lightsaber—or fishing. Having that physical connection with what you see on the screen is bringing in audiences that never would have tried games. But we’re in the very, very earliest stage of physical interface.

Okay, what’s coming that we haven’t seen yet?

Games have not been a good storytelling medium. It’s because the characters on the screen don’t have good facial animation. Mouth movement is unrealistic, so it’s hard to deliver dialogue. Facial animation and mouth movement will become part of games.

Let’s talk about you. Even as a kid, you were fascinated by business.

I was pretty entrepreneurial. I ran a hot-dog-and-soda stand at Little League, and I started a business planning parties in high school.