1) Vivendi has owned Blizzard Entertainment since 1998. For those of you keeping score, that's the year Starcraft came out. So I guess if you want to say they're an evil company who've ruined Blizzard, you should probably throw Diablo II and Warcraft III in the pile there with WoW. Which makes me wonder why you're even here on this website in the first place? For anyone wanting to be pedantic, Starcraft: Ghost doesn't count since the project was being developed by third-parties (acquired by Blizzard eventually who then put it on its infamous 'indefinite hold') and it hasn't actually been released.
2) Blizzard is completely unaffected by this acquisition. The new name 'Activision Blizzard' is the new title for the overall group of game publishers that Vivendi owns. This group was previously just called 'Vivendi Games'. It seems a logical step to rename the group to 'Activision Blizzard' given that they're the two largest, most successful and most well-known developers in the group. It doesn't mean a merging of the actual companies themselves.
3)
Blizzard has a console division already. Strangely enough, it's called Blizzard Console and was created from the third-party developer that was originally working on Starcraft: Ghost before Blizzard acquired them. Who knows what mysterious projects they're working on behind closed doors? *dramatic music*
Incidentally, the title of the news post is a little misleading since there's no actual 'fusing' of the companies to be had other than the use of their names as a figurehead distribution title. It's a corporate move higher-up on the food chain.
Additionally, I'd say easy-to-use editing is always going to be a fairly big part of the games Blizzard brings out. When Starcraft modding was all the rage the go-to site was called Camelot Systems (They originally dabbled in Age of Empires tools, hence the odd name). Blizzard gave one of the guys responsible for the SC editing tools an internship and permanently employed the other - Andy Bond (Aka King Arthur). Anyone who fiddled with the Warcraft III .slk files from the mpq would probably still find comments marked as A. Bond or A.B.
...but I digress. The point is that Blizzard has a reputation. They have a proven track record as old as some of our younger members on the site. One of the big appeals for their games and their continued product lifecycle long after a game has hit its peak is the editor capabilities and user-created content. Even if you hate Vivendi for some reason or another, it goes without saying that they're not so stupid as to break a good thing by forcing Blizzard against their 'groove' or whatever you want to call it. Nor do I think Blizzard themselves would care to discard such an integral part of their games.
Anyway, I've yammered on enough. Hopefully I've said something at least marginally interesting for someone. Doubtless I've made a mistake or two. I could probably go look up the third-party company(s) that worked on Ghost, but I'm way too tired. So I'll let someone else do it for me

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