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.
Pearl Jam
@Rushed next-gen consoles
You’re absolutely right that the media streaming functionality is painfully missing from the new consoles. I can only speak about the PS4, which is the one I got, but the fact that I can’t stream stuff from my PC to the PS4 is horrible. #FirstWorldProblems However, the backlog of PS3 games is deep enough that I don’t feel the need to box the console up anytime soon.
No CD playback was also something I couldn’t get my head around. It can’t be that expensive to implement… Is it a hardware or a firmware issue? Anyway, I rarely used my PS3 to play CDs – my stereo has a CD player so I use it instead.
Poland has never had much extra multimedia support. There’s no Hulu, no Netflix, no Amazon Prime… Even the YT app has been added just recently to PS3 in Europe (still missing on PS4). That’s why it’s not as bad here. I’m happy that the NHL Gamecenter App was available almost day 1 and I can watch the games on the PS4, even though it seems to be more glitchy than the PS3 version.
@Vita multiplayer
I played some LBP on the Vita and had some connectivity problems but not to the extent Jordan talked about. I played a lot of Killzone Mercenary, though, (Platinum, yo!) and it worked very well. Not laggy at all, usually full or almost full games. I played 100+ matches needed for the trophy and I got disconnected only a few times.
@Sony Santa Monica
I believe I heard in another podcast, but was to lazy to verify it myself, the studio is still hiring new people. One opinion I heard is that they’re not only trying to cut back on costs but also mix things up a little bit after the recent failures, i.e. GoW: Ascension. That’s why they laid off some people but will bring some new faces, although in limited numbers.
@QOTW
The arcades were not very popular in Poland in the 80’s and 90’s. I remember a wagon, similar to a cricus wagon, with some arcade games inside that we used to go to with my friends back in the day. I don’t remember many games, though but one of them was Cadillacs and Dinosaurs. There were also some Metal Slug machines. All the PacMans, Tempests and Defenders were slightly before my time, I guess, or this era of arcade games simply skipped the communist Poland in the 80’s. However, I remember playing tons of Terminator 2 pinball but that’s a different QOTW.
@Rushed next gen consoles: The more I hear about the lack of features and functionality of both the Xbox one and PS4. The more I am glad I choose to stick to PC gaming.
I think the aspect also that you talked about with people in charge not knowing or not liking their product is very telling of the state that these consoles have come to. They are out of touch with their customer base.
@Thief: This game is looking great from the LP video’s I have seen of it so far. I find it amazing anyone was under the impression Garret was some sort of assassin or warrior. That was an aspect I didn’t mind in the original series, you shouldn’t be fighting so getting caught and subsequently killed is the punishment.
Maybe those that think like that are those who are stuck in only playing action FPS games.
@Half-life: This is a series I haven’t been able to get into yet. but I could never figure out which was first Half Life 1 or Half Life 1 episode 1?
Freeman’s mind is awesome to watch as well. A fun way to do a LP I think.
QOTW: I love this question I used to spend many hours in various arcade games. I tried to avoid coin gobblers like Gauntlet, I would play those that had a end goal. Like Willow, Simpsons, TMNT, Xmen vs Avengers, Indiana Jones and Temple of Doom, and Dungeons and Dragons. I loved playing pinball machine games as well, and the air hockey games. Arcades just aren’t doing as well as they used to do though. We had one in my local mall called the Nexus that even had lan PC games but it shut down unfortunately.