Once upon a time, Activision Blizzards CEO Bobby Kotick kicked a few franchises to the curb: Riddick and Ghostbusters. No doubt, this was a result of the Activision and Blizzard merger requiring some resources to the merged together while others were cut from the lineup. Phil Harrison, the new big suit at Atari/Infogrames has raised these little birds from the ashes with a dream to build them into 100-million dollar franchises.
While Bobby Kotick said the titles, “don’t have the potential to be exploited every year on every platform with clear sequel potential and have the potential to become $100 million dollar franchises,” Phil Harrision sees it as a personal challenge to prove him wrong.
“What Bobby, perhaps unhelpfully said, was that those games were franchises which wouldn’t make $100m of revenue and generate sequels. If that’s his benchmark, then fine — and we’d love to aspire to the same benchmarks. But you know what? I would love to turn Ghostbusters into a $100m franchise, just to prove him wrong.” (1up)
In many ways, this is the difference in attitudes from a large firm compared to a smaller firm with strong goals and a vision for success. Activision Blizzard is big now, perhaps the biggest publisher in the industry, they can’t be bothered with minuscule 80-million dollar franchises. Others, like Atari, strive to take a title from nothing to something of greatness. Granted, Atari’s failed in a lot of franchises, but with their new ex-Sony executive behind the helm things could turn around and this might be the first step.
Most of the best game franchises in existance today started from nothing but a dream. Big publishers don’t have time to dream, they’re too busy making money off the fanboys of their current franchises.
Left for Dead was by far my favorite game from the 2000’s. Never gets old.
I’d have to say that Elder Scrolls: Oblivion is my favorite game from the 2000’s as it was such a beautiful game at that time and it had such charm with everything from the soundtrack to the NPC’s. It was a wonderful game.
@EA not green-lighting any single player games: In my opinion, I would rather have a grander single-player experience rather than a tacked-on multiplayer with little substance. I like to go from one game to another, and multiplayer doesn’t do much for me if it isn’t the main focus of the game (ex. Team Fortress 2).
@Wii U: I am quite excited for this and I will definitely be saving up the money to buy the Premium Edition and a ton of games next summer. Also I really love the fact that it will not only have an HDMI cable included, but also a charger for the Gamepad. That way I won’t have to buy any additional items or accessories which would all add up to a higher price than what is shown on the box.
The 32GB of storage doesn’t bother me because I barely buy anything digitally so I don’t really need the space.
List of games that I would like to play on the Wii U:
-Bayonetta 2
-Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two
-Game & Wario
-New Super Mario Bros. U
-Pikmin 3
-Rayman Legends
-ZombiU
-BIT.TRIP Presents Runner 2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien
-Trine 2: Director’s Cut