Activision Blizzard, the games company formed by the merger of Activision with Vivendi’s games unit, plans to capitalise on the popularity of its Guitar Hero franchise by developing an online music platform that could rival iTunes.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Bobby Kotick, the chief executive of the new company, said creating a Guitar Hero online music platform was “the natural evolution” of a franchise that has sold close to 20m units and generated $1bn in revenues.