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The Activision thread


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It'l never happen. CoD falls into the same pigeon hole as GTA does with kids. It has that allure that appeals to tryhard kids that think they're a "Propa G", or in CoDs case "Rambo". Anything outside the cool circle just gets ignored.

Another bulk of its sales come from the people who don't really like the game, but because mates play it they play it too. I have no idea why they let themselves get into this situation, maybe it's peer pressure from friends, but it's still people buying the product.

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Another bulk of its sales come from the people who don't really like the game, but because mates play it they play it too. I have no idea why they let themselves get into this situation, maybe it's peer pressure from friends, but it's still people buying the product.

i'll probably buy battlefield for that reason :unsure: at least i hope it'll be just battlefield and i can resist gears and cod. (gears single player should be good so i'll rent it)

about the activision guy yeah what he said made sense but they've still been responsible for shutting bizarre (and other good developers) down :fist: i'm still struggling to understand how shutting down one of the best racing game developers ever is a good idea for a publisher, yeah blur sold badly, but i assume they still want to sell racing games so who else is going to make them better racing games? (the answer is no one)

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I don't think I've bought a modern* Activision game since MW2, and that was the first one since COD4, which was the first I'd bought in a while.

Not by way of protest or trying to make some kind of point, just that they seem to have drifted a long way from what I want to play in recent years. The last Activision game I played was Singularity which I rented. It was good but very hard to justify that as a full price game with the slightly rough presentation and lack of options.

*I make the "modern" distinction because I've bought a few old games recently like Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines (from 2004). Compared to back then, Activision seem like a completely different company.

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I buy Call of Duty games because they're good games.

True dat.

I know you don't like them, Simon, but are you really trying to convince yourself that it's only selling by the bucket load because of peer pressure and people don't actually enjoy playing it? :unsure:

If anything it's the other way round and Call of Duty is the only game some people enjoy and will play.

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No, I'm saying that a good percentage of the sales goes down to the reason I stated about kids and peer pressure. Fine, some people like the game, I understand that and they will take up a share of the people who buy the game.

Tonight I was in a party with someone who was playing BLOPS. He stated he didn't like it, but he played it because all his mates did. He isn't the only person on my friend list in this situation, and on the various forums I post on there are quite a few people like him, that would rather be playing something else, but because their friends reel them in they end up playing something they don't want. This isn't my opinion. It's their fact.

I'm just going to stop posting news, because instead of causing discussion people take opinions the wrong way and we end up arguing.

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I don't think this is much of an argument...more like a good discussion.

Anyway yeah your right that will happen, I do it myself, but the vast majority of people buying a game will be because they like it, even if they may not know about the other choices. That's what I think anyway!

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CoD is the bread and butter of console FPS'. I don't hate it, I just don't find them particularly interesting. And CoD's popularity since CoD4 is mostly down to timing. An accessible, familiar online FPS available just when broadband connections were hitting every household. I personally think the world around us with the war in Iraq and surrounded by images of modern warfare also have something to do with it, too. And it's kept rolling due to the games industry as a whole who are eager to keep pushing existing franchises.

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CoD is the bread and butter of console FPS'. I don't hate it, I just don't find them particularly interesting. And CoD's popularity since CoD4 is mostly down to timing. An accessible, familiar online FPS available just when broadband connections were hitting every household. I personally think the world around us with the war in Iraq and surrounded by images of modern warfare also have something to do with it, too. And it's kept rolling due to the games industry as a whole who are eager to keep pushing existing franchises.

i don't really hate it either. i even enjoyed playing a bit of cod2 and cod4 back in the day. the popularity being down to timing though i'm not sure i agree (definitely more accessible though, and the other stuff maybe), cod4 came out just after halo 3 and from my personal experience it took a lot of players away from halo - so at the time it must have been doing something people wanted? (obviously being a big halo fan i find this hard to comprehend) but then halo 2 was pretty old at that point and 3 hadn't had long enough to become established, so maybe halo wouldn't have had much an effect on it after all.

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  • 2 months later...

Have a look at this.

http://investor.activision.com/secfiling.cfm?filingid=1352027-11-25

Don't worry if none of it made sense to you. I'll just come out with it in plain English.

On November the 8th, Bobby Kotick sold over 7000 of his shares in Activision. This netted him over $1million. He still has 3 milliion shares left in Activision. In otherwords, He has an 8 figure stake in the company. Holy. Fuck. :blink:

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  • 4 months later...

http://www.metro.co.uk/tech/games/894334-infinity-wards-rob-bowling-quits-call-of-duty

Even before Call Of Duty creators Jason West and Vince Zampella left Activision, under what we think we can safely describe as a 'storm', Rob Bowling has been the most public face of developer Infinity Ward.

Originally he was just the community manager, which given the manners of the average Call Of Duty player on Xbox Live must have already been adapted by Beelzebub himself for a whole new circle of Hell. Somehow he stuck it out for six years, although the last few since West and Zampella left have been as 'creative strategist' for the Modern Warfare series.

'Today, I resign from my position as Creative Strategist of Call of Duty, as a lead of Infinity Ward, and as an employee of Activision,' is the rather unemotional message he left on Twitter.

While his former paymasters at Infinity Ward had only this equally bland message for him: 'We wish Robert all the best. Thanks for everything. For continued MW updates & all things IW follow @infinityward.'

Activision itself later released the following statement: 'We sincerely thank Robert for his many years of service. He's been a trusted and valued member of the Infinity Ward team. We wish him all the best on his decision to pursue future opportunities.'

It's hard not to get the impression that no one was sad to see anyone go in all this but despite most of Infinity Ward's key creatives having left the company to join West and Zampella at new developer Respawn Entertainment, that's not thought to be Bowling's destination.

Rumours suggest that Bowling sided with Activision during West and Zampella's sacking, although like everything else to do with the scandal that's never been confirmed. Whatever he does end up doing though Bowling has hinted he'll remain in the games industry, so we imagine it won't be long before we hear from him again.

How do you think this will effect CoD?

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  • 1 month later...

http://spong.com/article/26995/Activision-Blizzard-Millions-of-CoD-and-WoW-Active-Users

Activision/Blizzard has released its figures for 2011/2012 in terms of money and users (who are basically money). It's doing very well thank you.

High up the figures is this one: The combined total of the Call of Duty and World of Warcraft series Monthly Active Users is approximately 50 Million. That's 40 Million MAU for CoD and "Over 10 Million MAU for WoW".

Whichever way you cut it, that is a lot of people. Active people. The kind of people who spend money. That's impressive.

Having covered the hardcore, surely the company must have messed up the casual? "Skylanders Spyro’s Adventure was #1 Kids Video Game for First Quarter 2012 with 30+ Million Toys Sold Life to Date Through 3/31/12" says Activision. So, that's a "No, it didn't mess up" then.

So, you would expect this to mean that the company made made some money in the 1st Quarter (to March 31st 2012)? Maybe not.

"For the quarter ended March 31, 2012, Activision Blizzard’s GAAP net revenues were $1.17 billion, as compared with $1.45 billion for the first quarter of 2011. On a non-GAAP basis, the company’s net revenues were $587 million, as compared with $755 million for the first quarter of 2011."

So, using either Generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) or not, the period from the holidays until Easter were not as good this year as last. What does CEO Robert Kotick say?

"Our better-than-expected first-quarter performance was driven by global consumer demand for Activision Publishing's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, and Skylanders Spyro's Adventures, as well as Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft which remains the #1 subscription-based MMORPG in the world," oh right. Anything else Bobby?

"Additionally, Activision Publishing's Call of Duty Elite service continues to grow and currently has more than 10 million registered users including more than two million annual premium members, an increase of approximately 33% from January 31, 2012.

"On May 15 Blizzard Entertainment will release the highly anticipated Diablo III and we are proud to report that pre-orders for the game worldwide have set a new record for Blizzard.

"For the remainder of 2012 and beyond, our product pipeline includes some of the most innovative games we have ever developed for our established franchises, including Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria™, StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm and all new MMORPG game, as well as Activision Publishing's Skylander's Giants, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 and a new universe from Bungie.

"We also continue to expand our service platforms, Blizzard Entertainment's Battle.net and Activision Publishing's Call of Duty Elite, grow our global footprint into new markets and strengthen our development resources for the future. Our high-quality brands, industry leading operational capabilities and solid balance sheet should enable us to continue to take full advantage of the opportunities afforded by the expanding interactive entertainment market and deliver continued superior returns to our shareholders."

WoW is still making them a fucking bomb then. Should be interesting to see how much the Mists of Pandoria expansions do for sub numbers, it's split the playerbase quite bad from my understanding. A lot of WoW players think they are ripping of Kungfu Panda. What most of them don't understand is that the new race was actually in the game about 5 years before Kungfu Panda even came out at cinemas.

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http://spong.com/nibble/26996/Kotick-Skylanders-Bests-Star-Wars

Activision, despite having a bit of a weak first fiscal quarter (in comparison to, well, itself) is cheering about something that we in the hardcore, specialist gaming world have scoffed at: Spyro and Skylanders and toys.

CEO Robert - Bobby cos it makes me sound cuter - Kotick, has pointed out that: "Based on our internal estimates, we believe that Skylander's toys sales in the first quarter exceeded those of Star Wars, the #1 action figure line."

Yup, Activision's toys are beating the grand-daddy of them all, Star Wars. This is based on the following fact, "Skylanders Spyro’s Adventure: 30M+ toys sold, our largest new IP launch."

I think the decline in Star Wars toys into second place might have something to do with Star Wars been shit on at every possibility by it's owner and whoring it out on every single thing ever.

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  • 1 month later...

http://spong.com/article/27453/Activision-Always-Wanted-Rockstar-Guys

Speaking to Videogamer, UK industry legend Andy Payne has confirmed what many have assumed for man years: Activision has wanted Rockstar.

Speaking about Activision's Leeds mobile games studio which was announced earlier this year, the Mastertronics man told the outlet: "They [Activision] kind of always wanted to get the Rockstar team."

He continued:

"They wanted some of the Rockstar guys, yeah. Well it's smart, because Britain's pretty ahead in mobile programming. We're pretty good at it. Yet again, we're good at it but we don't talk about it too much because we're British."

He also confirmed that the studio will be working on Call of Duty in mobile format.

Stiff upper lip and all that.

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