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PC Gaming's latest visionary: Mr. Robert Kotick.
- Thread starter ghst
- Start date
Green Biker Dude
Banned
they could use the opportunity to port their engines to linux instead of relying on windows since they'd be basically starting fresh on a whole new market, but that would make too much sense. the pcs could be sold for a lot less too
either way, if they're using windows, wouldn't they need a customized version and in turn, still depend on microsoft? lol
either way, if they're using windows, wouldn't they need a customized version and in turn, still depend on microsoft? lol
Didn't he want something similar for the Guitar Hero franchise? Peripherals that could be plugged directly into a TV set. I don't think this is a PC gaming vision as much as it is a publisher's vision of expanding revenue sources: be they online subs, DLC, monthly fees, or their games on other devices. If they could, Activision would rather have a closed platform, the "open" nature of such a platform only allowing them to do as they please on said platform. See Battle.net, for example.
I know Kotick is incredibly disliked on GAF, but the notion that he is a money grubbing monster really doesn't stand up empirically.
It would be one thing if publishers were raking in money hand over fist, and Activision was going well beyond that and producing gross margins using anti-competitive behavior.
But that isn't the situation. Most of these companies -- particularly EA, a favorite of many GAF members now -- are losing significant amounts of money, and what they're doing simply isn't sustainable. Kotick is looking for financially sustainable methods to produce these games, and that either requires making games with far lower production values (which few people seems to want) or finding new revenue streams.
It would be like Ferrari offering all their cars for free. Would that be cool? I'm sure car enthusiasts would be very excited, and in the short term that's amazing for consumers. However, Ferrari would also be bankrupt in a matter of days, if not hours. In the long term, this is bad for consumers. No more Ferraris, ever again.
I am not suggesting that Activision's solutions are the only plausible ones, but they are one of few companies that seem to be making rational attempts to make this blockbuster-games model sustainable long term. You can either 1) Reject the big budget blockbuster model, or 2) Figure out ways to make more money off those Blockbusters. Activision is choosing option 2.
I personally would vastly prefer option 1, but I think there's a fairly strong contingent of GAFfers who don't want to give up the blockbuster games model, and I'm not sure those people have thought this all the way through. Or they haven't looked at Publisher's financial results over the last half decade.
It would be one thing if publishers were raking in money hand over fist, and Activision was going well beyond that and producing gross margins using anti-competitive behavior.
But that isn't the situation. Most of these companies -- particularly EA, a favorite of many GAF members now -- are losing significant amounts of money, and what they're doing simply isn't sustainable. Kotick is looking for financially sustainable methods to produce these games, and that either requires making games with far lower production values (which few people seems to want) or finding new revenue streams.
It would be like Ferrari offering all their cars for free. Would that be cool? I'm sure car enthusiasts would be very excited, and in the short term that's amazing for consumers. However, Ferrari would also be bankrupt in a matter of days, if not hours. In the long term, this is bad for consumers. No more Ferraris, ever again.
I am not suggesting that Activision's solutions are the only plausible ones, but they are one of few companies that seem to be making rational attempts to make this blockbuster-games model sustainable long term. You can either 1) Reject the big budget blockbuster model, or 2) Figure out ways to make more money off those Blockbusters. Activision is choosing option 2.
I personally would vastly prefer option 1, but I think there's a fairly strong contingent of GAFfers who don't want to give up the blockbuster games model, and I'm not sure those people have thought this all the way through. Or they haven't looked at Publisher's financial results over the last half decade.
I dont see how this will happen when you have dozens of different chipsets and a million different graphics cards. A PC is as strong as its communities weakest link. So where do you draw the line for offering that CONSTANT clean gaming/entertainment experience. That is why the console industry is so successful, you have 3 companies atm that each offer their experience, you buy into the experience. You dont have to worry about specifications, or how well it will run, the game is tailored to exploit the benefits of the console. With PC's you chose your experience, do you want an internet machine? Are you going to play games? How much? Do you want cutting age graphics?
The only way I can see a one console future is maybe with a mac-like effort where everything is done in house with very little variation in hardware choice. Oh wait, so what we really want is a console with a versitle fuctioning operating system.
The only way I can see a one console future is maybe with a mac-like effort where everything is done in house with very little variation in hardware choice. Oh wait, so what we really want is a console with a versitle fuctioning operating system.
BobsRevenge
I do not avoid women, GAF, but I do deny them my essence.
I want to say something witty in response to this but I can't stop crying...aeolist said:
:''''''(
I do think Water Wendi is onto something with publishers bailing out on the PC. Now they can't cultivate that market since it has already evolved. Free to play is a hot aspect to get people to play your game.
Technology isn't a barrier anymore for PC gaming. X360 has ATI video chip, PS3 has Nvidia video chip. You have multi core processors on consoles and PC. With consoles deciding to last longer, you can now build a 500 dollar PC which will give you a superior game experience than you find on your 360.
Jewbacca said:
Technology isn't a barrier anymore for PC gaming. X360 has ATI video chip, PS3 has Nvidia video chip. You have multi core processors on consoles and PC. With consoles deciding to last longer, you can now build a 500 dollar PC which will give you a superior game experience than you find on your 360.
Segata Sanshiro
Member
So he's not a money-grubbing monster, he's just doing whatever it takes to make more money. Gotcha.Opiate said:
water_wendi
Water is not wet!
Exactly. They left it and its changed without their input. What is Bobby Kotick going to do? Ditch the 360/PS3 and go to the PC.. the platform that sold 3% of MW2s total numbers? (i tried to find updated sales numbers for MW2 PC but can only find that one figure the first launch month.. afterwards its like PC sales statistics are scrubbed clean of any press releases)Mrbob said:
REMEMBER CITADEL
Banned
ghst said:
Um, no we can't. I started using consoles a couple of years ago precisely because I was fed up with PC gaming.
Some of the stuff this generation is similar to ferrari modifying the car to only run on gas sold by ferrari, or filling the tires with a non-air compound that performs worse than air.Opiate said:
Pursuing option 2 has led to these companies burning up any goodwill they had with customers, at least the fraction of them on gaf and the like minded.
Segata Sanshiro said:
Again, this would be far more objectionable if EA/Take 2/THQ and the like were making lots of money, and Activision were simply trying to make even more money. Or if they were doing something explicitly illegal, like anti competitive behavior, or something.
That's not the situation. Somebody has to figure out how to actually make a profit, and very few people seem to like the answer of "make the graphics worse."
Absolutely. I'm not defending everything Kotick says or does: he's definitely made some poor choices and can seem curt or rude. And in fact, for my personal tastes in gaming, basically everything he's doing is bad for me. I don't want Call of Duty, I do not play WoW, and I almost never enjoy "blockbuster" games. I'm just trying to show why some people here might not want to rag him quite so much: if you do happen to love Call of Duty / Uncharted / etc. and would like to see those games continue to grow in the next decade, someone has to make some unpopular decisions, and that person is Kotick.
Segata Sanshiro
Member
I don't think anyone thinks he's doing things that are illegal per se. He just pushes the boundaries of good taste, is very open about his low opinion of his customers, and sometimes adopts short-term slash 'n' burn tactics that are probably unhealthy in the long-term. The man cares only about profit and seems to have little interest in games or even human beings. These qualities make him quite an executive. They also make him a disgusting excuse for a human being and no friend to a consumer in this hobby.Opiate said:
Segata Sanshiro said:
He can definitely be curt: again, I'm not excusing all of his behavior. However, most of the strategies he employs are the natural consequence of making games with 40 Million+ budgets. It is the only practical way to handle a company that is making decisions of that size, and honestly, I would even argue it's immoral to behave less ruthlessly in such cases. It's investor money. If we're talking small projects, it might be okay to take a hippie-ish approach to your production. Make things for the love of gaming, and what not. I certainly appreciate it, and typically investors can be indulgent when we're discussing smaller portions of revenue.
That simply isn't okay when you're talking about 40, 50, or even 100 Million dollars of investor money.
So, again, we've either got to stop spending so much money, or we have to accept that Kotick's approach is closer to the sustainable paradigm than Riccitielo's, as an example. And very few people seem to like the "stop spending lots of money" answer, so that doesn't leave us with many solutions.
Segata Sanshiro
Member
Was riding Guitar Hero into the ground until it died really what was best for investors? And Tony Hawk? And closing decent development houses because they didn't want to churn out yearly sequels? And chasing away the brain trust of the company's most valuable series because he didn't want to pay out bonuses and allow them a little creativity?Opiate said:
I think Activision itself is headed for disaster, and it's directly a result of his short-sighted decisions. Blizzard will ensure that Activision doesn't go under, and that's lucky for Bobby, I guess.
Bobby Kotick said:
So after endless threadshitting on behalf of mods/open standards/Activision is Satan and MW2 is his mark, suddenly none of that matters once The Kotick starts with the "MISS U SO MCH PC XOXOXO" messages.ghst said:
Oh Uncle ghst, tell us all some more stories of your wild and reckless youth, when you burned rubber in your '72 Camaro and swore that hot chicks and dedicated servers would never die!
Opiate said:
thing is unlike xbox live (which is still a complete rip off for what they actually provide) COD multiplayer costs activision nothing to run.
he's just saying hey we are helping MS make money in their overpriced XBL fees, give us some of that.
i mean i guess if they spent so much making mw2 they have yet to make it back i could understand, but i actually heard that it sold ok...
having an open platform would just allow them to charge more without giving anything back, even though they are already making lots of money.
brain_stew
Member
pcostabel said:
Hardware that outperforms the PS3 and 360 is already cheap (and will be super cheap once Fusion hits in early 2011) and both Microsoft and Sony are already turning a profit on hardware (Microsoft a considerable one by now) and won't ever be going back to the razor blade model after the amount of damage it has caused. There's never been a better time to try something like this.
Oh and I'll say it once again since it bears repeating, no console or handheld is currently being sold at a loss. I've said it before but in this day and age home consoles really are kind of superfluous and unnecessary, good gaming hardware is cheap and PC gaming is a million times more accessible these days, the quicker these silly proprietary boxes are killed off the better for all of us. There's still a place for dedicated handheld gaming machines of course but both the PS3 and especially the 360 are just gimped, locked down, low end PCs that don't offer anything a PC can't do a million times better. I still see a little merit for systems like the Wii which try and offer something different but the 360 brings nothing new to the table.
DeadTrees said:
Anyone that helps facilitate the abolition of closed home platforms should be supported by all gamers. With an open marketplace revenue and subscription models will all naturally sort themselves out as the consumer has all the power.
Opiate said:
Activision Blizzard has a 30% profit marigin according to ycharts.com. That's a lot for any business and it does indicate that there is a possibility that this corporation is either not employee friendly (skimping on employee salaries and fringes) or consumer friendly (price gouging).
Or both, as it were.
Vigilant Walrus
Member
Fredescu said:
Irelevant. The point was that people complain to no valid effort and had been doing it for years before SWTOR was announced.
brain_stew
Member
H_Prestige said:
Of course you can but most people don't realise this. Most PCs still don't come with dedicated HDMI out or integrated Wifi and are still generally too big for living room placement. The "all in one", "off the shelf" solutions that tick all these boxes are few and far between, expensive and usually come with crappy graphics solutions.
Ofcourse, anyone with the motivation can solve all these problems off their own accord, but to have Dell and HP shipping cheap boxes that fit all those criteria, maybe even come with a custom interface and specifically marketed for use with a TV and for games changes the dynamics of the market massively. Suddenly these fantastic machines that me and my fellow GAFers have been screaming from the rooftops about are mass market commodity items and even more people realise how wholly unnecessary closed and gimped platforms like the 360 are. If it wasn't for games where Microsoft paid for exclusive rights then I wouldn't have a 360 because all those games would be on the PC and other platforms anyway.
Diablohead
Member
The whole pc to tv thing, I been doing that since 2005 
my pc screen is really a lcd tv and I juggle between my computer and my 360 on it, hell I could go connect to our lounge 32" with a hdmi cable if I felt like it.
What I think kotick means is smaller scaled down and simple to use pc's like a barebones case so it's tiny like a console and not a big pc tower, saying that I always wanted to make a dedicated tiny pc for the main room so I can go play pc games with a pad on a big screen without having to move anything.
my pc screen is really a lcd tv and I juggle between my computer and my 360 on it, hell I could go connect to our lounge 32" with a hdmi cable if I felt like it.What I think kotick means is smaller scaled down and simple to use pc's like a barebones case so it's tiny like a console and not a big pc tower, saying that I always wanted to make a dedicated tiny pc for the main room so I can go play pc games with a pad on a big screen without having to move anything.
Opiate said:
More of a reply to your series of posts than this one.
The lack of profitability is because he and the entire industry have embraced the blockbuster model and have no interest in anything else. He's as responsible as anybody for this broken model... hence he's the poster child for it.
It's one thing to establish a hit series and know that putting mega resources into it has a high probability of 10 million sales, but that's not what happens. That's why I have no sympathy for the guy or the industry. They're the ones who don't care about anything else. And they're the ones who are chewing through one "failed" developer after another. If the game can't produce 500+ million gross, they're useless. It's the Hollywood model on steroids. There's a huge middle ground they're willfully ignoring.
so i havent paid attention to the figures but why is everyone talking as if they lost money on MW2? i'm pretty sure they made an enormous profit on it, regardless of it costing a lot to make.
if they are losing money its because of the crap like guitar hero/dj hero/tony hawk hero that they are running into the ground, ie precisely not the blockbuster stuff.
if they are losing money its because of the crap like guitar hero/dj hero/tony hawk hero that they are running into the ground, ie precisely not the blockbuster stuff.
fizzelopeguss
Banned
Lord Error said:
Earlier this year AMD stated that they had shifted well over 6 million DX11 GPU's in 2 quarters.
Console gaming will always be around because of price and the upgrade process. Even if there were $400 gaming pcs people would stick to consoles. The upgrade cycle of PC's will scare people off because within 12-16 months their gaming PC won't be "top of the line," when the the PS3, XBOX360 and WII have been the "top of the line," consoles for years now. All Activision is going to do is hasten the death of Call of Duty.
bistromathics
facing a bright new dawn
I don't like to get involved in the Activisionlol threads, but seeing Blizzard's name on the publisher is starting to get on my nerves.
Judging by the popularity of Apple products, cable services, gaming consoles, etc. over the years people might actually PREFER walled gardens. I don't personally. I resist all that shit, but you can't argue with sales.
I don't doubt that a "pc" will move into the living room next to the television, but it's going to be done with a logo on it and a different kind of walled garden. No one's going to invest the time and money and give that shit away for free.
It will take some kind of unholy conglomerate of companies (EA/Activision and Time Warner?) to make it happen soon. Seems unlikely.
I don't doubt that a "pc" will move into the living room next to the television, but it's going to be done with a logo on it and a different kind of walled garden. No one's going to invest the time and money and give that shit away for free.
It will take some kind of unholy conglomerate of companies (EA/Activision and Time Warner?) to make it happen soon. Seems unlikely.
poppabk
Cheeks Spread for Digital Only Future
Upgrades will be coming to consoles soon I am sure, its the next thing from PC's they will adopt. Of course it will be more straightforward, a GPU black box that disconnects, plug-in your new ($150) GPU+ black box, download the Halo5 GPU+ patch and you are now at 60fps and have improved anti-aliasing, six months down the line the GPU+ only games start to appear. The "have to upgrade every year" anti-PC console players will adopt it faster than the MW2 PC players betrayed their pledge.charsace said:
As for my take on Kotick's statement, I'm pretty sure he sees it as this - CoD in one form or another drives 60% of Live subscriptions - so maybe 6 million subscriptions at $50 a piece, every year - so they are the driving force behind $300 million in revenue for MS - and probably $250 million in profit each year. They already paid MS when they paid the licensing fees, so why should they be missing out on the revenue they are directly driving.
I don't think he wants an open system, he wants an open hardware system that he can run his own closed software system on.
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