Now that Activision has merged up with Blizzard all under Vivendi it’s time to consider what to do with all the additional overhead, management, internal studios and sheer amount of people working on projects within their organization. In other words, it’s time to trim the fat and get leaned out for the long haul.
This isn’t unexpected news, the only way to grow more effective as a large company is to remove some of the access baggage that can slow you down and let your competitors take control. This is a sad job which nobody takes pride in (most normal people anyway) but it could mean the difference between rising to the top and sinking like a brick.
“We are focused on improving efficiency across the combined organization and are concentrating on businesses where we have leadership positions that are aligned with Activision Publishing’s long-term corporate objectives,” Activision Publishing CEO Mike Griffith said in a statement. (gamespot)
It’s important to be aggressive as a large company, just like you would be as a startup company. There is a reason startup companies grow into powerful competitors that win, grow and eventually become (or be purcahsed by) larger companies.
As part of this move some staff will be migrated to new projects, persumably reporposed into other divisions or allowed to find new jobs somewhere else. This is called “realignment” by those in the management organization, and currently those up for realignment are:
- Radical Entertainment (Prototype, Crash of the Titans)
- High Moon Studios (The Bourne Conspiracy, Darkwatch).
- Massive Entertainment (World in Conflict, Ground Control)
- Swordfish Studios (50 Cent: Blood on the Sand, Cold Winter)
These realignments along with other organizational changes will effect a few working game titles:
- Brutal Legend
- Ghostbusters
- Wet
- Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena
- World at Conflict: Soviet Assault
- 50 Cent Blood on the Sand
- Zombie Wranglers
- Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust
- Several Xbox Live Arcade titles
At this point we’re not sure which, if any, will continue to be developed under Activision and which will be sold off to other companies or retired. Surely, those money making titles will be sold off if Activision has no plans to finish them.
Again, it’s hard to consider this a bad decision. This is a decision of growth over having too many “Cooks in the kitchen” making soup. It’s better to have rock solid titles of epic proportions than a large pool of mediocre titles with minimal sales and bad reputations, and that’s why they spend a lot of time in the office working on this and having a type of office chair for long hours on a computer is really helpful in this area.
It’s not that the titles they’re questioning are necessarily bad, but are not the leading titles in their space and are should be either given a stronger team to work on them or retire them entirely. To build a stronger team with passion and direction it might be best to sell the franchise(s) to other organizations so they can do it right with time and attention to detail.
(Thanks, gamespot)
We’re all used to Sony falling on their face at E3 in the last few years, but, this year, things were different. They’re information was delivered well, they had a great presentation medium using Little Big Planet‘s game engine as a presentation platform over the standard PowerPoint slides and everything went smoothly.
@No PSN unless you waive lawsuit
On the behalf of the PC community, we welcome all PS3 players to join us :P. Or play SP games only, assuming that the SP games don’t require a PSN connection.
My guess is: the network is not safe, and they [Sony] don’t plan to fix it any time soon, so they don’t plan to play nice. Something evil this way comes, at least for PSN customers.
Jonah, pipe down 🙂 …
@DC Universe Online goes free-to-play
Peer-to-peer MMOs + free-to-play may be the only way for small devs to start off an MMO.
As for free-to-play as the single business model in the futire, dunno. If the game is stunning, people will pay.
@Microsoft: Xbox TV this Fall
So basically competition to Netflix and Hulu. The more the merrier, if you ask me.
@Rogers Cable ordered to stop throttling gamers
Throttling is cheaper than replacing lines with ones of a higher capacity. I find it weird though that a third party entity orders a cable company how to do their business. It should be the customers, voting with their wallets that do that.
@Nintendo and Valve say no to smartphone games
Dunno about your explanation Jonah. Valve didn’t mind doing games for PS3, Mac and it is now pushing Steam for XBox 360.
One thing that I keep ‘feeling’ about Valve is that they’re understaffed: between making games and improving Steam, they might actually lack the resources to move to that market.
Oh Paul … everybody dies at one point or another, and we have little control over it.
@QOTW:
Well, the very first one I played is WWF: Royal Rumble, on the Sega Genesis.
Hi, fairly new listener here. I came across you while searching for a decent podcast about games, but couldn’t find one that I actually liked. I finally found your podcast, which is very enjoyable, especially because of the chemistry going on, you work well together.
@DC Universe going free-to-play: I think that all these MMOs going f2p is a good sign because it shows companies that they could make more profit if they stop trying to get loads of money upfront and instead gain the loyalty of their customers.
@Nintendo and Valve saying no to smartphone games: For both their businesses, I think it’s best that they want to focus on products for their platforms only. I remember Nintendo once saying that they don’t consider smartphone games to be “true” games, and I don’t think they will contradict themselves too soon.
Oh and to Paul: I know where you’re coming from with all this want of hate-mail. I have this “problem” myself too. It’s just a need you have after being so nice to people and receiving only praise. I haven’t yet received any hate, even after having asked for it, and so I won’t give you that satisfaction either.
No PSN for you! – Congrats on breaking the story guys, too bad you didn’t get the recognition you deserve, but us listeners know the truth, if that means anything at all. I am glad that this was actually pointed out, and its so hard to believe that a big company like Sony cares more for their wallets than their customers. GASP
Qwikster – It seems like a reasonable decision, people wanted games, and that’s what they are giving. The only thing that I could see being a problem is the price. I know GameFly charges 23 dollars a month which is too much for me, but if Qwikster can do the same thing GameFly does but cheaper, I will definitely be utilizing this feature.
Xbox TV – It seems that the Xbox is going to be an all around entertainment system rather than a gaming platform. They just keep on adding features to it, and if they had one the HDDVD vs. Blu-Ray wars, they PS3 would be dead. For only 200 dollars you can get one, and then you can pick and choose what features you want to pay for. Microsoft has handled this console well, even when your console fails, they fix it and send it back with a 1 Month Gold Subscription, they are doing everything right in my eyes.
No Smartphone Games from Nintendo – I think that the main reason that they aren’t doing this is that they don’t want to be giving anything to their competitors. It has been said many times that the DS’s main competitor is the iPhone, and if Nintendo were to give content to them, they would be taking money out of their own pockets. In my opinion, it was a good decision to stay away from smartphones, in Nintendo’s case.
QOTW – The first game I can remember playing would be Doom. Their is also the N64 games, but Doom seems to be pretty prevalent in my mind when it comes to the first. I can still map out the first chapter’s levels in my mind.
Super question, but I don`t think that I remember…
QOTW – My vanilla answer to this question is Super Mario Brothers for the NES on my 4th Birthday. I kept running full speed ahead on level 1-2 hoping to beat the koopa troopa to the low hanging formation of blocks only to run right into him every time. It took the older neighbor to teach me how to actually play video games before I learned my lesson. Alas, I’ve retained this bullhead, brute-force strategy to gaming to this day. I suck at video games unfortunately.