One source told the paper, "The emotional part of Yang would rather do anything but sell to Microsoft, but he doesn't have the cards to come up with a value-creating, competitive alternative for shareholders." Reports yesterday indicated Yang's last hope remains with Rupert Murdoch and News Corp..

"We looked every which way to figure out how to participate in what Blizzard had created," said Kotick, "We couldn't find a way to duplicate it, but we could acquire the expertise." That would usually mean finding young talent that's successfully run a few massively multiplayer online games, like Three Rings. Instead Kotick turned to Blizzard, with its one-trick pony — hopefully for Kotick, it won't be going out to pasture any time soon.