Activision: "We're Taking Some of the Biggest Risks"

[Saucycarpdog]

http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/09/26/activision-were-taking-some-of-the-biggest-risks

I'm wondering how Skylanders and Destiny are "big" risks? Skylanders is an average game with a slew of merchandising behind it and Destiny is being made by Bungie, any game they make is going to be big.

 

[Terminate421]

Its because they have CoD and Warcraft under their belt that allows them to do those

Just another publisher talking the talk.

 

[Clowndoe]

Yup, I'm sure the shareholders are really biting their nails every time they release another Call of Duty game as they sit in their air-tubes in their pools on their yacht in a bigger pool on a bigger yacht. If the best he can come up with to prove his point is Skylanders...

 

[Maximum Bert]

Well they arent really taking many big risks are they I suppose Skylanders was a risk which paid off but apart from that they havent done anything.

As for Destiny being a risk er yeah sure its a new IP but its a pretty safe bet I mean its a FPS by Bungie. They will likley take more risks when WOW and COD die a little more.

 

[BQE]

Yup, I'm sure the shareholders are really biting their nails every time they release another Call of Duty game as they sit in their air-tubes in their pools on their yacht in a bigger pool on a bigger yacht. If the best he can come up with to prove his point is Skylanders...

Oh come on, I would hardly believe Activision has reached the level of Yachtception. One thing to note is that Activision-Blizzard is nearing Microsoft in terms of it's compartmentalization. The success of some areas may not influence others, it's reasonable to assume World of Warcraft has led them to overhaul the WoW TCG in the form of Hearthstone. Call of Duty on the other hand might just be attempting to maintain the status quo, it has to beat Battlefield 4 and other entries in a few months or that area will seriously falter.

If I were a bettin' girl, I would speculate that Blizzard might be preparing another MMO release on the tails of WoW's closure. This is a pretty longterm forecast however, and things could likely change.

 

[Jandau]

fare points on CoD, Skylanders and Destiny

but wow is dying, titan is cancelled and Blizzard doesn't have a release schedule going forward worth shit...

WoW isn't dying, as much as it's simply entered its twilight years. It's still the biggest MMO out there. And considering how old it is by this point, it's about time it started dwindling. Titan has been put on hold and there's so little actual info about it that anything about it is conjecture. As for their release schedule, the D3 expansion seems to be aiming to fix most of the glaring problems with the game (crap loot, auction house, etc.), the next Starcraft expansion is in the works, and then there's Hearthstone.

Mark my words, Hearthstone is going to print money. Maybe not WoW-levels of money, but it'll be a ton of profit and it'll keep on giving. It's a good, solid game, plenty of polish, strong brand behind it (Warcraft is still a strong brand), accessible to new players, etc. Heck, its CLOSED BETA is among the more viewed games in twitch.tv at the moment.

So on the Blizz side of things, it's not looking that grim. Reaper of Souls looks like it might reinvigorate D3, SC2 is chugging along steadily, WoW is still bringing in mounds of cash and Hearthstone stands to be a low-cost-high-income hit.

 

[LaoJim]

Great, I've been looking for a chance to vent against Activision and here it comes.

Looking through my games collection a few weeks ago I released just how little games I have in my collection from Activision. Now I'm not the sort to boycott publishers or particularly biased towards any genre. If I see a game I like I buy it (I only play XBox 360 so there may be other titles on PC). Currently from Activision I have:

6 Call of Duty games (I buy them cheap second-hand to play through the single player)
Blur (Good racing game, but Bizarre went bust after releasing one game for Activision)
Skylanders (My young cousins bring their toys and play this on my machine sometimes)
Quake 4
Wolfenstein (Two inferior versions of classic ID titles that I bought on the basis of How Bad Could It Be?)
Prototype (I quite enjoyed it, but it's hardly a franchise to rival GTA, Assassin's Creed etc)
X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Lots of fun, but not something to rival the Arkham Games, rather the case of a skillful developer being able to make a good game with the budget usually reserved for cheap movie cash-ins)

And that's it. There is nothing on the list that I would consider to be a great franchise except for CoD. Nothing particularly "risky". The CEO claims that the do "a few things well". From what I can see they simply do "a few things"

(Incidentally from a business point of view Skylanders probably was "risky", they had to make all the toys in the hope they would sell, an activity games companies are not usually involved in)

EA gets a lot of hate on this forum, and from the way it treats some of it's key franchises and customer, it deserves it. But at least EA has games to ruin. It may have effed up Dead Space 3, but it did publish the original Dead Space. It bought Bioware (and yes the games have gone downhill). It has all its sports franchises. It has Need for Speed and Burnout. It released Shadows of the Damned, Kingdoms of Amalur, Mirror's Edge, the Skate series; all games I'm fond of.
What does Activision have?

It's funny Activision has been a name I've recognized growing up ever since my Spectrum days and who I think (or rather thought of) as being a great publisher. And they are supposed to be the largest publisher in the world (From what I know they trade the position back and forth with EA each year based on who has had the best results) and yet they produce nearly nothing of interest to me.

So Escapists, am I being unfair to them?

*Reading this post again, I guess I'm ignoring Blizzard a bit, still don't mentally think of them as one company. I don't think it changes my point very much

 

[veloper]

Playing it safe describes Activision/Blizzard better than any other major publisher out there.
These are people who thought making a sequel to Starcraft was a bold and daring move.

 

[TheIceQueen]

Don't lie, Activision. Skylanders may be a hit, but you've got most of your studios working on Call of Duty hits. Let's go through the list, shall we?

Here are studios that work on Call of Duty almost exclusively nowadays:

Beachhead Studios
Infinity Ward.
Treyarch
Raven Software
Sledgehammer Games
Demonware
Neversoft

Out of 14 studios, you've got seven who's job is to work on Call of Duty in some way. 50% of your company focused on developing one franchise isn't taking a risk.

Of the remaining, three work on Skylanders, which is a game that's designed purely to suck money from the parents of little kids. Admittedly, one of these is working on a Crash Bandicoot reboot as well.

One is a mobile games developer.

One does DJ Hero.

And the remaining two are High Moon and Radical.

You're not taking any damn risks, you liar.

 

[LaoJim]

Here are studios that work on Call of Duty almost exclusively nowadays:

Beachhead Studios
Infinity Ward.
Treyarch
Raven Software
Sledgehammer Games
Demonware
Neversoft

Out of 14 studios, you've got seven who's job is to work on Call of Duty in some way. 50% of your company focused on developing one franchise isn't taking a risk.

That's an interesting and enlightening fact that I wasn't aware of. Says it all really.

 

[TheIceQueen]

Here are studios that work on Call of Duty almost exclusively nowadays:

Beachhead Studios
Infinity Ward.
Treyarch
Raven Software
Sledgehammer Games
Demonware
Neversoft

Out of 14 studios, you've got seven who's job is to work on Call of Duty in some way. 50% of your company focused on developing one franchise isn't taking a risk.

That's an interesting and enlightening fact that I wasn't aware of. Says it all really.

Now, admittedly, some of these studios only do stuff like software and DLC, but it's still pretty much their sole job to work somehow on Call of Duty.

But yeah, it's a pretty telling fact and if Call of Duty ever falls flat on its butt, a lot of people are going to be out of jobs and Activision is going to be taking quite a bit of a dip in profit.

 

[LaoJim]

But yeah, it's a pretty telling fact and if Call of Duty ever falls flat on its butt, a lot of people are going to be out of jobs and Activision is going to be taking quite a bit of a dip in profit.

Kinda makes me wish I bought CoD at full price on day one, so I that could stop buying CoD at full price on day one.

 

[beez]

Yeah... yeah.. as opposed to you know, companies who battled their publisher's demands over featuring a female on their cover art, et cetera. Right.

 

[Jandau]

WoW isn't dying, as much as it's simply entered its twilight years.

Only if you're inclined to be reeeeeeeally generous, to the point of equating the fact that basically any MMO can keep the lights on infinitely on very little income. And by that definition, Everquest 1 and DaoC and WAR and so on are still alive and well, so it's not probably a definition most people would support.

The subscriber base is shrinking dramatically and new content no longer attracts significant increases in users. That's pretty much ailing severely, though we won't be in the last-gasp phase until they stop just dicking around with alternate monetization because it lets them squeeze the customers and start looking at it seriously as a way to keep the game going.

Ok, I get it, you don't like WoW. I don't either. But you're just being silly. If WoW were to lose 50% of its current users, it'd still be the biggest MMO out there. Putting it in the same category with EQ1 and WAR is just silly and childish. It'll likely lose people slowly over the next few years and likely stabilize at some point. It's not the "place to be" anymore, the bubble has burst, but that doesn't mean it's not a popular game with a metric fuckton of people playing it.

As for alternate monetization, yeah, they're milking it. But they've been milking it for years now. At some point it'll likely go F2P as well. So what? Seriously, you really want WoW dead, but it's not even close to that and won't be for years to come, for better or for worse...

 

[RicoADF]

Great, I've been looking for a chance to vent against Activision and here it comes.

Looking through my games collection a few weeks ago I released just how little games I have in my collection from Activision. Now I'm not the sort to boycott publishers or particularly biased towards any genre. If I see a game I like I buy it (I only play XBox 360 so there may be other titles on PC). Currently from Activision I have:

6 Call of Duty games (I buy them cheap second-hand to play through the single player)
Blur (Good racing game, but Bizarre went bust after releasing one game for Activision)
Skylanders (My young cousins bring their toys and play this on my machine sometimes)
Quake 4
Wolfenstein (Two inferior versions of classic ID titles that I bought on the basis of How Bad Could It Be?)
Prototype (I quite enjoyed it, but it's hardly a franchise to rival GTA, Assassin's Creed etc)
X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Lots of fun, but not something to rival the Arkham Games, rather the case of a skillful developer being able to make a good game with the budget usually reserved for cheap movie cash-ins)

And that's it. There is nothing on the list that I would consider to be a great franchise except for CoD. Nothing particularly "risky". The CEO claims that the do "a few things well". From what I can see they simply do "a few things"

(Incidentally from a business point of view Skylanders probably was "risky", they had to make all the toys in the hope they would sell, an activity games companies are not usually involved in)

EA gets a lot of hate on this forum, and from the way it treats some of it's key franchises and customer, it deserves it. But at least EA has games to ruin. It may have effed up Dead Space 3, but it did publish the original Dead Space. It bought Bioware (and yes the games have gone downhill). It has all its sports franchises. It has Need for Speed and Burnout. It released Shadows of the Damned, Kingdoms of Amalur, Mirror's Edge, the Skate series; all games I'm fond of.
What does Activision have?

It's funny Activision has been a name I've recognized growing up ever since my Spectrum days and who I think (or rather thought of) as being a great publisher. And they are supposed to be the largest publisher in the world (From what I know they trade the position back and forth with EA each year based on who has had the best results) and yet they produce nearly nothing of interest to me.

So Escapists, am I being unfair to them?

*Reading this post again, I guess I'm ignoring Blizzard a bit, still don't mentally think of them as one company. I don't think it changes my point very much

My list of Activision games are mostly their older one, Star Trek games especially, Gun, Star Wars Jedi Knights, Wolfenstein, Soldier of Fortune, Heavy Gear, Battlezone, Mechwarrior 1&2 etc. They use to have a more broad list but then CoD came around and they abandoned everything stupidly for 1 major franchise and now their finally adding 2 more that are the same thing as CoD to the list, woopty doo :-/ No risk involved.

 

[LaoJim]

My list of Activision games are mostly their older one, Star Trek games especially, Gun, Star Wars Jedi Knights, Wolfenstein, Soldier of Fortune, Heavy Gear, Battlezone, Mechwarrior 1&2 etc. They use to have a more broad list but then CoD came around and they abandoned everything stupidly for 1 major franchise and now their finally adding 2 more that are the same thing as CoD to the list, woopty doo :-/ No risk involved.

Yes, that's kind of my point. Growing up I felt that Activision was a company with some great games, this generation, nada.

 

[MysticSlayer]

It's funny Activision has been a name I've recognized growing up ever since my Spectrum days and who I think (or rather thought of) as being a great publisher. And they are supposed to be the largest publisher in the world (From what I know they trade the position back and forth with EA each year based on who has had the best results) and yet they produce nearly nothing of interest to me.

So Escapists, am I being unfair to them?

*Reading this post again, I guess I'm ignoring Blizzard a bit, still don't mentally think of them as one company. I don't think it changes my point very much

If you're wondering why Activision keeps up as one of the biggest publishers in the industry then you do need to include what they are bringing in from the Blizzard side of things. Yes, Call of Duty gets them a lot of money, but Blizzard's titles are also responsible, so ignoring Blizzard doesn't help if you're trying to understand why Activision is still so big.

Anyways, Activision, outside of Call of Duty, has had some popular franchises over the years that have since declined drastically. Tony Hawk is almost nothing anymore, and even I, a (former) fan of the series have trouble remembering that they came out with anything after Project 8 (2006), with the exception of Pro Skater HD (2012). Guitar Hero has fared even worse than Tony Hawk over the last couple of years. Basically, that's two major franchises that I'm sure have helped build Activision's name over the years that Activision no longer pursues (at least not with any passion). That might help explain how they continue to be such a big name, even if most people now can only recognize it from Call of Duty and Skylanders.

OT: Activision certainly takes risks. I mean, have you see how vicious the CoD community gets if you even bother to change a single feature? Their lives are literally at stake with every decision made about CoD, much more the fact that they may get serious mobs that tear down their whole business...(what's sad is that I'm only partially joking, not being full-out sarcastic)

 

[LaoJim]

If you're wondering why Activision keeps up as one of the biggest publishers in the industry then you do need to include what they are bringing in from the Blizzard side of things. Yes, Call of Duty gets them a lot of money, but Blizzard's titles are also responsible, so ignoring Blizzard doesn't help if you're trying to understand why Activision is still so big.

Yes sure WoW must be a big earner for them and I guess their merger with Blizzard hides the extent to which they have shrunk due to the failure of franchises like Tony Hawk and Guitar Hero

Anyways, Activision, outside of Call of Duty, has had some popular franchises over the years that have since declined drastically. Tony Hawk is almost nothing anymore, and even I, a (former) fan of the series have trouble remembering that they came out with anything after Project 8 (2006), with the exception of Pro Skater HD (2012). Guitar Hero has fared even worse than Tony Hawk over the last couple of years. Basically, that's two major franchises that I'm sure have helped build Activision's name over the years that Activision no longer pursues (at least not with any passion). That might help explain how they continue to be such a big name, even if most people now can only recognize it from Call of Duty and Skylanders.

Right, but I don't understand why they aren't investing more in new franchises to try and replace them, even if those franchises turned out to be unsuccessful. It's not even about risks, Need for Speed sells well, but Activision hasn't tried to develop it's own generic racing game series, or sports series. It doesn't have a sandbox game to rival GTA or Assassin's Creed. (Possibly Prototype but I don't see that it gave either the original game or the sequel enough resources to make it competitive). It's made Skylanders but doesn't seem to want to push further into the kids market. (It would be nice if one company did). It does seem to be an "eggs in one basket" company.

 

[MysticSlayer]

If you're wondering why Activision keeps up as one of the biggest publishers in the industry then you do need to include what they are bringing in from the Blizzard side of things. Yes, Call of Duty gets them a lot of money, but Blizzard's titles are also responsible, so ignoring Blizzard doesn't help if you're trying to understand why Activision is still so big.

Yes sure WoW must be a big earner for them and I guess their merger with Blizzard hides the extent to which they have shrunk due to the failure of franchises like Tony Hawk and Guitar Hero

Anyways, Activision, outside of Call of Duty, has had some popular franchises over the years that have since declined drastically. Tony Hawk is almost nothing anymore, and even I, a (former) fan of the series have trouble remembering that they came out with anything after Project 8 (2006), with the exception of Pro Skater HD (2012). Guitar Hero has fared even worse than Tony Hawk over the last couple of years. Basically, that's two major franchises that I'm sure have helped build Activision's name over the years that Activision no longer pursues (at least not with any passion). That might help explain how they continue to be such a big name, even if most people now can only recognize it from Call of Duty and Skylanders.

Right, but I don't understand why they aren't investing more in new franchises to try and replace them, even if those franchises turned out to be unsuccessful. It's not even about risks, Need for Speed sells well, but Activision hasn't tried to develop it's own generic racing game series, or sports series. It doesn't have a sandbox game to rival GTA or Assassin's Creed. (Possibly Prototype but I don't see that it gave either the original game or the sequel enough resources to make it competitive). It's made Skylanders but doesn't seem to want to push further into the kids market. (It would be nice if one company did). It does seem to be an "eggs in one basket" company.

I agree. I was just pointing out how they developed a name worth recognizing, even if they tend to not have much going for them outside of one or two franchises.

With that said, though, they do have their hands in multiple different games outside of their major ones. I myself have often recognized them for the Cabela's games, but many gamers probably don't even know what that is. They also do a lot of license games based around Marvel and James Bond. They aren't just Call of Duty and Skylanders, even if those seem to be the only two things they are really letting us know about anymore. Then again, I doubt any of their smaller franchises has a chance of picking them up should Call of Duty go down, as they tend to be of lower quality and designed around some form of fan service (ex. comic book fans with Marvel or hunting enthusiasts with Cabela's), not the higher-quality, broader appeal games like CoD.

 

[JayRPG]

WoW isn't dying, as much as it's simply entered its twilight years.

Only if you're inclined to be reeeeeeeally generous, to the point of equating the fact that basically any MMO can keep the lights on infinitely on very little income. And by that definition, Everquest 1 and DaoC and WAR and so on are still alive and well, so it's not probably a definition most people would support.

The subscriber base is shrinking dramatically and new content no longer attracts significant increases in users. That's pretty much ailing severely, though we won't be in the last-gasp phase until they stop just dicking around with alternate monetization because it lets them squeeze the customers and start looking at it seriously as a way to keep the game going.

The problem with dwindling WoW numbers is that they simply got greedy...

Since WotLK they have been trying to cater to everyone and every playstyle and appeal to everyone and every playstyle but the end result is a game that doesn't appeal to anyone or any playstyle.

During BC they had great subscriber numbers, mostly everyone liked the challenge of raids and dungeons, they got rid of the most infuriating parts of raiding from vanilla (like farming for months for resist gear), it wasn't easy and it wasn't too hard either.

Then WotLK rolled around and instead of being happy with their 6-8 million subscribers, they thought if they made raiding easy as shit they could get more casual subscribers, and they did, they got to 13 million or so, then older players that made the game what it was started complaining so they tuned up heroic raids so they were still a challenge, and that maybe helped tide over a few.

Now it's just gotten to the point where there are 400,000 raid modes to try and please everyone but the end result, as I said earlier, is that it pleases no-one, it's just one big clusterfuck - an MMO shouldn't appeal to everyone, hell, a video game in general shouldn't appeal to everyone.

Blizzard should have identified their demographic/market and stuck with it, instead they went for short-term profit instead of long-term gain.

(The problem with catering to 'casuals'* is that they are 'casuals'*, inevitably a casual player will quit/stop playing the mmo well before hardcore or serious raiders will because they are simply not as invested in the game)

*Please note I'm not using this in a bad sense sometimes you just don't have the time to put into an MMO, I was a hardcore WoW and Aion player but a casual AoC, Swtor and GW2 player - I played the latter 3 for a significantly shorter amount of time.