Many game studios are being dropped following a bit of an economic downturn in the United States and globally. Activision has to deal with being agile enough to survive the economic times like anyone else and has dropped a few games that had great potential.
Gamers continue to ask the question, “why?” when some of their highest potential games were dropped to the floor. Ghostbusters and Brütal Legend are a couple examples of games with eager fans already salivating prior to its launch. Some of these fans are a bit ticked off that Activision named them as dropped franchise opportunities.
People ask why a company holds one “mediocre” title while getting rid of other potentially awesome ones. Don’t forget, this is a business and a good studio/publisher is going to make good business decisions without emotional attachments – those that bring emotions into play may end up with a highly valued product (to them) with no additional potential and lower revenue. This isn’t to say developers cannot be passionate about their games and their industry, they just have to build games gamers will buy and continue to fall in love with release after release.
Activision CEO Bobby Kotick is one of these business savvy individuals who knows where investors will find profits for the future, and he also know how to manage employees, with the use of software like this sample pay stub for payments and more.
“[Those games] 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. … I think, generally, our strategy has been to focus… on the products that have those attributes and characteristics, the products that we know [that] if we release them today, we’ll be working on them 10 years from now.” (1up)
Ghostbusters is a great example of a title which could be well received and fun to play but probably wouldn’t be an exploitable franchise. The game, based on a popular movie, has limited potential for yearly releases and huge franchise success. Ghostbusters fans would probably disagree, but that’s when emotion comes into play. Think dollars and cents, not awesome fun gaming.
Oddly enough many of these business decisions from Activision, Electronic Arts and other big publishers arrive when the economy is in free fall and investors are eying your revenue potential. People make their most important and, usually, unfriendly business decisions when their company is at risk.
It’s sad to think money comes first and entertainment value comes second but we’re not the ones trying to make a profitable living in the industry. Put yourself in Kotick’s shoes as he walks into a board meeting to discuss future plans, road maps and profitability – you’d do what you have to do to keep your job, right?
It’s official, EA has
Hey guys glad to have the show back I was concerned on what had happened. I’m sorry to hear that Jordan is gone, does this mean you need a replacement?
@Activision: Speaking of them only having a few actual games they are reviving the Sierra brand apparently. If you go to http://www.sierra.com you can see the trailer they have released for this.
I am not sure what to make of it, since more will be revealed at Gamecon. When you mentioned them only having a few games that belong to them this got me thinking that this may be in part reason why they are reviving the Sierra brand to make more games. I don’t know if this means they will hire the old Sierra game developers, get new ones and what will be the quality of the games, what should we expect? I think I will keep my expectations very low on this one.
@ Disney revenue up: Yeah, Ouch indeed “we have money now that we’ve restructured a bunch of people out of jobs”
@Sony lawsuit settlement: No matter what Sony does they still look bad for holding back that information, why they thought that idea was good is beyond me.
@Yogcast Kickstarter: Everyone of these is I think a Investment, since gambling to me is more a game of chance like with dice, horses, sports, etc. If you don’t do your research then yes you are gambling the money. However as Jonah pointed out find out if they are a experienced game maker and it’s less of a risk. I trust Obsidian because of their impressive resume of past games they have made. I’ve been that careful with the other projects I’ve backed or kept an on. Paul is right as well as you need more then just a neat or cool idea, you need to know how to make that idea happen. So with that in mind I think you can use Kickstart to smartly invest in a games future and avoid games that will likely not make it.
@ Spaced Invaders: I think Paul is right here and that this is going to be another Battleship movie. This doesn’t seem like a good enough material to make a movie out of that won’t seem generic. We have so many of those already as Jonah tried to point out. This could be fun IF they make it tongue in cheek parody like Mars Attack was. But they will probably take the over serious tone and try for a Independence Day and fail. Maybe they will get a good writer and director but this does seem like a desperate grasping at straws.
@ PC and Console decline: Really? You keep using that word, I don’t think it means what you think it means.
QotW: With more digital games this certainly seems possible, making it easier to beta perhaps and find bugs to be fixed later.