I don't know if this makes them "independent," but it doesn't seem to make them owned by a conglomeration of other parties either.
The post-split cap table looks something like this (from what information has been made public at this point): Bobby Kotick & associates (including Brian Kelly and Tencent, among other unnamed parties) own 24.9%. Vivendi's share drops to 12%. A-B itself buys back the majority of shares. Technically speaking, yes, A-B becomes an independent company (in as much as the majority of outstanding shares are publicly owned).
My phrase "I'd hardly call that independent" was probably an overstatement worth correcting. My bad on that one. Because the word "independent" (and especially the derivative "indie") has a very industry-specific meaning in this case, I found the headline a bit misleading.
[1] http://kotaku.com/5559201/a-delightful-chat-with-the-most-ha...
An effective CEO has at least a theoretical understanding of what the various employees in his company do, that while they may not know how to program they at least know what programming entails.
To not use the products your company produces is arrogance if not idiocy. How can you lead except by numbers in that situation?
Remember when the CEO of Motorola got their email printed out by their secretary? Ignorance like that reduced them from the dominant force in the industry to a pet of Google.
He may not be a gamer, and he may receive a lot of flak for his brazen "I just crank out IP; I'm not trying to make art" attitude. But as a CEO, it's hard to argue with his track record over the last 20+ years. As to whether he's qualified to lead Activision in the post-mobile world, well, that remains to be seen. Innovator's Dilemma.
The biggest threat is that they'll run out of franchises to ruin.
It's really hard to tell if someone like Kotick is running the business in a sustainable fashion, or if he's just beating all the value out of the company, getting in a good run, and then dumps the company in someone else's lap when it's exhausted.
E.g. movie studios CEO might suck at writing, acting and never know which end of a camera shoots but, unlike their game industry colleagues, the do watch movies.
Steve Ballmer might be an awful coder and would not know how reinstall Windows from an OEM disk but, I have no doubt, he uses Windows and other MS products every day.
Elon Musk might not know how to change a tire or adjust wheel alignment, but he does drive cars.
The video game industry is really standing out with the most management, not just C*Os, having absolutely no idea what are the products their minions are producing.
That's several examples of CEOs that are obviously at least superficially familiar with the products their respective companies make.
Do you really want a university educated, never used a tool to make a living in his life, deciding he gets to dictate how to frame, roof and side your new house, maybe use less nails to cut down on costs? Is that a company you want to invest in?
I work in construction, my boss climbed to the top but he still only gives suggestions on how to do things because it's been over 20 years since he's actually done it. Our tools aren't dictated to us, our set ups aren't. We do our job, he does his.
For a company producing games your executives don't need to be the creative brains or anything of the sort, they've got tons of that below them. They've got entire departments of artists, developers, writers, etc. Why the hell would anybody think its financially prudent to get the CEO in on what would be a good story when you've got a career writer, or what cinematography style you should use when you've got artists on staff.
You want the management to be coordinating all the little guys so that everyone hits the goal posts and finish lines at the right times and make those judgement calls to either delay the project or drop something to make the deadline.
People who manage game developers don't necessarily need to be good at developing games- they need to be good at managing people who develop games, which is related but not the same.
While it's /possible/ for a CEO influence effective strategy without using or thoroughly understanding their product, it does not exactly inspire confidence.
This story is less about independence, and more about allowing Vivendi to cash out on its 2007 merger of Activision and Blizzard. Basically, Vivendi transferred Blizzard to Activision in exchange for 52% of the combined entity (Activision Blizzard). While A-B has been doing well over the years, Vivendi has not fared as well. It wants some to capture some of the upside through the buyback.