Phil Harrison’s Building a 100 Million Dollar Franchise

December 20, 2008December 20, 2008| schommerschommer| 0 Comment| 11:50 am
Categories:

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.

0 thoughts on “Phil Harrison’s Building a 100 Million Dollar Franchise”

  1. Pingback: Phil Harrison’s Building a 100 Million Dollar Franchise | Game Stooge
  2. Pingback: Phil Harrison’s Building a 100 Million Dollar Franchise | Game Stooge

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related Post

Episode 550: Kowtowing to ChinaEpisode 550: Kowtowing to China

Blizzard finds itself in hot water as it finds itself having to explain its actions in pleasing the Chinese government, in news that’s still hot and doesn’t look like it’s going to cool down anytime soon. It’s enough to overshadow even an official console announcement from Sony. There’s a Gaming Flashback, the embarrassingly bad FMV game Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties.

The news this week includes:

  • Blizzard is facing a boycott after removing a Hearthstone Grandmaster
  • PlayStation 5 launches Holiday 2020
  • Doom Eternal delayed until March 2020, Doom 64 goes multiformat

Let us know what you think.

Read MoreRead More

Would You Buy An Apple-Based Console?Would You Buy An Apple-Based Console?

Does the console market need any more competitors? We’ve seen record sales in the game industry for titles like Halo 3 and Grand Theft Auto IV along with huge expectations for Resistance 2 and some new Sony PlayStation 3 projects. Yet, the tiny little Wii product holds best sales records around the world as the heavy hitter, Microsoft and Sony, compete for the most awesome spectacle show of graphics.

Competition is a great way to drive down costs, drive up expectations and give consumers new innovative products with better quality. Imagine if Apple got into console development and produced a new highly sexy product with the hype and consumer desire of the iPhone or iPod.

“Apple has the infrastructure in place through iTunes to create a real value proposition for those that want to extend the capability of their console beyond gaming and has the cash — about $20 billion — to not only invest in the best components on the market, but in an online gaming experience that could rival Xbox Live.” (kotaku)

Apple’s showing a huge surge in recognition and sales thanks to the iPod and growing desire for Apple hardware competing against Microsoft’s Vista operating system. As more consumers turn to Apple for their music and mobile gaming needs, Apple must see windows of exploiting the gaming market further.

More importantly, nobody can pull off digital rights management (DRM) and locking consumers into a product line like Apple all while they beg for more. Consoles are little boxes of DRM waiting for happy consumers to buy into the concept all while avoiding the hacking and bittorrenting like you’ve been seeing on Spore in the last few weeks. Had Spore been released on a console this DRM fiasco would have been avoided because gamers don’t even realize (or care) that a console locks them into playing and, more importantly, buying the game for the hardware.

(more…)

Read MoreRead More