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)
Metal Gear Solid 4 was a solid release for the PlayStation 3, the exclusive title that gives Sony an edge over the competition. This was Sony’s Halo 3 title and it needed to be a big success in order to keep gamers confident in the Sony brand.
Hearing about Drones delivering packages I have to agree that will be abused and people will attempt to steal and break them. I’m sure the paranoid people will think they are being used to track everyone.
On the continuing discussion of boss battles I agree with Paul that just because there are bad implementations of it doesn’t make it a bad concept idea. I think Jada Empire was a very narrative game and had just fine boss battles. I do agree there are games that don’t need them or have them in a way that doesn’t make sense.
I was watching a PS4 game about Zombies, the hero went through hordes of zombies with ease until he came up against some human bikers. I watched as he drove a car through several of the bikers causing explosions and the bikers just continued somehow to survive. Then after an some invisible timer ran out a Boss Biker suddenly appeared.
The Boss Biker rode a huge bike that spewed fire forth and had grinding blades in front of it. Otherwise the bike was unarmored and the hero free to pump several dozen rounds of blood splattering shots into the guy. Slowly lowering the the large life meter.
A boss battle like that is a slag and not fun. I do have to say also my favorite part of Fable 2 was indeed being able to kill the final guy and interrupting his evil overlord speech.
Quest For Glory series was good at having multiply paths to victory depending on what character build you went with.
QOTW: GTA also had a companion app, the IFruit. It was nothing more then an a glorfied Tamagotchi game only your feeding your dog so he can have better snooping skills. I didn’t find it necessary to do this app thankfully.
Hey guys! I had to take a break from posting comments with all that new-gen stuff going around…
It’s great to have Paul back. His sarcasm and no-bullshit approach to the news items and his fellow podcasters add a lot to the show 😉
Let me add my 2 cents to the boss battle discussion. In the past I usually didn’t have a problem with them but the more I play the more I dread the inevitable final boss battle in some of the games. I hated the final battle in Killzone: Mercenary. Ultimately, I wasn’t able to complete all the contracts on the highest difficulty settings and I simply gave up.
On the other hand, in games such as Resogun or Super Stardust, the boss fights add a lot to the titles. It’s like Paul said – there’s nothing wrong with the boss battles intrinsically but sometimes the implementation blows.
As far as the QOTW goes, my ‘smartphone’ is not so smart anymore and most of the companion apps don’t work on it. My only 2nd screen experience so far has been the PS Vita Remote Play with the PS4 and I really enjoy it, although it’s not really 2nd screen. It also has this functionality but there’s nothing to use it with at this point. The Vita is similar to the WiiU in that your 2nd screen is also a controller so it should work as a gaming companion and I can see myself using it in the future.
I know that Knack has a companion app that is a Bejeweled-style game. The one thing I don’t really get is why they don’t release those same apps on the Vita.
By the way, since Dan is enjoying Tearaway so much, maybe he’ll also enjoy my blog post on it – http://playstationpalo.wordpress.com/2013/11/29/platinum-tracker-tearaway-29 😉 Shameless plug FTW !