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)
@Street Fighter X Tekken DLC will never come to Xbox 360
I get Dan’s point, placing the DLC on the disk is like dangling a carrot in front. And yes, since the DLC is already distributed, then why not get some money out of it?
@Vivendi finding few buyers for Activision-Blizzard
Thing is, the game industry is quite tough. Spending N billions to buy a piece of it is quite a risky bet. Miss-manage it and you’re never going to recover the investment. So I can understand why nobody is rushing to buy.
As from the potential buyers point of view, Vivendi desperately needs money. Play your cards right and you can get Activision-Blizzard at a nice discount đ
@âWouldnât be surprisedâ if more aggressive PC games start to appear
Hitting a Diablo 3 home run: good luck. It’s hard to do for any platform, not just the PC.
Erm, no cycle detected on my end, always KB and mouse here.
@Grand Theft Auto V will support planes and jets, wonât have beta test
Not a fan. Loved Mafia though.
@ Question of the Week.
I was going to say ‘No’ initially, but I saw the hardware specs, so it’s a ‘maybe yes’ now. Android is hackable, it has a USB port so ….
Gearbox: âWouldnât be surprisedâ if more aggressive PC games start to appear: For the record, I got excited as soon as I heard you say that Borderlands 2 would have drag-and-drop inventory, because Borderlands’ huge number of items and weapons makes it a pain to navigate through the inventory with the consolish setup it had. Other than that, all I got that Gearbox was placing a huge bet on the PC, and telling everyone how great it will be to be a PC gamer.
@OUYA: Good for them for tons of funds, but this can also be the point where a Kickstarter goes horribly wrong. Seriously, from what I understand they pretty much said “we’re going to try these bunch of different ideas together and see if they stick”. Let’s hope they’re successful and manage to create a great platform.
@QOTW: Probably not. I barely play Android games, and I doubt any huge games will be on the system before anyone knows how successful it will be.
And yes, Gearbox are looking for headlines: http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/07/24/randy-pitchford-plagiarism-is-rife-in-the-industry