So i'm posting on this french forum where i usually post all the video games news i stole from you guys here, and i tried to make a summary of the activision conference to shareholders that happened recently
now, i saw some things mentioned, here and there but i thought you guys could appreciate the summary i made, i tried to keep it simple
Also, i probably missed some piece of info, or misinterpreted something, and sometimes, my sources were contradicted
please feel free to tell me anything i should change or add, you can reply here or send me a PM
let's start with some facts:
-during the past year, Activision Blizzard scored a record with Call of Duty: Black Ops, gaining over a billion dollar in just 7 weeks (the only other product in entertainment to achieve this was the movie Avatar)
-the DLC for this same Call of Duty was bought 1.4 million times in the first 24H
-There is now 12 million people paying monthly to play WOW (just imagine the shitload of money), you can add 4.7 million copies of Cataclysm (3.3 million being sold in the first 24h)
-4.5 million copies of Starcraft II were sold
however, guitar hero doesn't sell anymore, only around 100 000 copies of Warriors of Rock left the stores
Tony Hawk: Shred never made it above 3 000 copies
but all in all, it's far from bad
AB (Activision-Blizzard)yearly income is increasing by 4%, up to 4.45 billion of dollars
Q4 was however decreasing to 1.43 billion of dollars (-8%)
AB yearly profit is booming with almost 4 times last year amount (418 million of dollars from 113 million of dollars)!!
last quarter result, though, is negative, showing a loss of about 233 million of dollars (20 cents per share), still less than 2009Q4, 286 million of dollars (23 cents per share)
in consequence of these very good results
-Mountain View studio (RedOctane california) will close
-massive lay off for Radical (90 employees fired, around 50% of the studio)
-Luxoflux will close
-Neversoft will close as soon as they finish Guitar Hero 6
that's around 7% (500 people) of AB workforce that will or already did leave the company
Eric Hirshberg, CEO of Activision Publishing announced that nowadays, only top tier games are competitive on the market
as logical consequences True Crime: Hong Kong is canceled, according to Hirshberg, it's not a top tier franchise and anyway: "To be blunt, it just wasn't going to be good enough"
there won't be any new musical, or skateboarding game in 2011
DJ Hero 2 and Guitar Hero 6 are still to be expected, but later
Diablo II and, Starcraft II expansion probably won't make it in 2011 financial year (not in the next 12 months)
A new studio is to be created in china, taking care of a Call of Duty game, it'll be a MMO, free to play with microtransactions, since it's impossible to make asians pay for real games because they pirate too much
i guess Activision can be renamed to "Call of duty games" since that will be all they do
that creativity speech is again proven complete bullshit, they pushed guitar hero and tony hawks too far, now they're pushing COD far off the limit, when it will fall, AB will only have blizzard to prevent from company's shutdown
it's a bit sad Neversoft has to go, the first two Tony Hawk titles where great, but you can clearly see them going downhill when they started with that guitar hero crap ...
Some development brands may be less affected, however -- sources have told Gamasutra that Neversoft, once heavily involved in the Guitar Hero brand, may be working on a new original IP project and is unlikely to be meaningfully affected by the cuts.
TWIN PEAKS is "something of a miracle."
"...like nothing else on television."
"a phenomenon."
"A tangled tale of sex, violence, power, junk food..."
"Like Nothing On Earth"
I really enjoyed Guitar Hero and while working for PC Gamer Mag I was able to talk to Marcus Henderson the lead guitarist when the tracks weren't official. BatM and CfH were excellent representations of the guitar solos. He lost his position when Red Octane became less involved and with all tracks "real" there was no call for his services. Great player great guy, another corporate casualty. Personally what killed GH franchise for me was the number of games coming out of the gate around the time they offered the VanHalen one for free when you bought another GH title. Impossible to keep up and actually enjoy the game by mastering the songs. CoD is w/o doubt heading in this direction. I smell EA tactics.
Nui wrote:
Because digital shipping takes time. Think of all the digital boats and their digital captains.
the thing here is they have the capital to do risky Ips and yet they cancel a already finished game True Crime: Hong Kong for it's not being a top tier franchise
how can they know this they did not even released it
There are many untrue things said by Acti employees lately:
1. They want to be creative, but us evil gamers won't let them
2. Only blockbusters can sell ... which is pure bullshit, all you have to do is take a look at the casual game market to see, many developers are fine and a-ok.
Many of you guys will automatically say: yeah yeah, corporate greed is the faulty party here ... but in reality, it's all the cool-aid drinking kids, who still support games with yester year's mechanics, like CoD.
If anything, it's the average stupidity and young age of the modern gaming mass, that has lead to this.
I wouldn't be surprised if EA makes it a proper short and cheap XBLA/PSN/Steam game to make fun of ActiVision
TWIN PEAKS is "something of a miracle."
"...like nothing else on television."
"a phenomenon."
"A tangled tale of sex, violence, power, junk food..."
"Like Nothing On Earth"
I think this messages are all bullshit. I dont feel sorry anymore for this big companies because it also doesnt tell how much they actually earn each year.
Imagine i also have a company and earn 5 million a year.. that wouldnt be good for my company so i make a loss. Fuck them!
If i see the general beta crap i see released lately then i hope the whole market collapses and start from scratch one again. Work for you money bitches.
All these publicly traded Publishers have to go. EA and Activision especially.
It's a bad concept and it's terrible for everyone. "Pleasing the Shareholders" having to make increased revenue each year etc. It kills the Industry. Any Industry.
i find these kind of company strategies amusing, it's exactly like big retail stores going under because of over expansion. they either have to find "bigger" numbers or they implode.
what does fortnite have to do with anything? did they steal all of your jobs? can the market not sustain more than 2 games at once?
what happened to the billions upon billions that world of warcraft generated not more than a few years ago? it still has a huge amount of subscribers even now.
Up until February 2017, Activision was reportedly averaging sales of $1.65 billion per quarter. That came to an end in Q3 2018 when it reported revenue of $1.5 billion. That marked the fourth quarter in a row of revenue declines.
During the Q3 2018 earnings call, Activision’s guidance was dismal. Company execs said fourth-quarter revenue would come in at $3.05 billion, which is short of the $3.06 billion, the Street had expected.
Analysts have weighed in on Activision’s financial declines. Some see the company’s sales falling by 2% this year.
"Oh my god, the ship is sinking, sell the stocks NOW!!!"
"Holy crap, so much lost revenue ... fire some people!!!"
"For fuck's sake, it is because another company made a lot of money, isn't it? Peanuts left for us... time to neck myself I guess!"
It's not the companies per se, that suck. It's the greedy management (especially finance and marketing) who have very little idea about how consumers decide their spendings.
Fortnite finally showed players that we can have a massive game without being charged premium or even double.
It's not the companies per se, that suck. It's the greedy management (especially finance and marketing) who have very little idea about how consumers decide their spendings.
Fortnite finally showed players that we can have a massive game without being charged premium or even double.
Is it really greedy management?
Blizzard have not put out anything meaningful in last couple of years.
D3 is stagnant. D4 was already rebooted TWICE. HoTS is vaporvare. WoW Expansion have been seriously lackluster.
It's not the companies per se, that suck. It's the greedy management (especially finance and marketing) who have very little idea about how consumers decide their spendings.
Fortnite finally showed players that we can have a massive game without being charged premium or even double.
Is it really greedy management?
Blizzard have not put out anything meaningful in last couple of years.
D3 is stagnant. D4 was already rebooted TWICE. HoTS is vaporvare. WoW Expansion have been seriously lackluster.
It's a lack of talent. All those great games from Blizzard you loved growing up > yep those developers left a long long time ago. Seeing this problem right across the industry (Except for indies, passion projects, small dev teams at risk of bankruptcy). You can't just replace industry veterans, hire millennial's at cut rates and expect delivery of a same level product.
It's like a band, can't replace all the members, slap a higher number on the end and expect a quality product. EA's ME:A team weren't even skilled enough to animate characters properly.
Last edited by AmpegV4 on Tue, 12th Feb 2019 00:43; edited 1 time in total
It's both, but greedy and out of touch management is the most damaging between those.
Like for example DX:HR and Womb Raider 2013 having to sell millions and millions according to the SE head honcho dickheads
Result: next round of games for those series were a step down from their predecessors, and Deus Ex was canned likely in spite of producing some disney sponsored garbage instead
Spoiler:
prove me wrong consoletits, because I probably am but still...
boundle (thoughts on cracking AITD) wrote:
i guess thouth if without a legit key the installation was rolling back we are all fucking then
Several of these key talents also grow older and leave for either other digital or computer business prospects (Possibly outside of gaming, pays well and less crunch and other negative aspects.) or retire or possibly try to un-retire via something like self publishing or public funding like Kickstarter though often showing it takes a solid team effort to make a quality game and without publisher backing finances can be a problem area.
Different mentality and conditions back in the smaller more upstart period of the 80's and 90's too although many things were also similar. Will be interesting to see what the video game industry will change into but the prospects from the publishers view on a constant small source of content updates and long term commitment for franchises instead of yearly sequels is a distinct possibility particularly with more online connectivity these days and micro transactions whether gameplay related or purely cosmetic.
Keeping players hooked for 2 - 3 years even for non-MMO games would be quit lucrative although it's not the mobile market by any means. Service and subscription models I can also see being attempted again and again until it starts taking hold.
We'll see I suppose particularly now at the turn of another console generation and the shift that will also bring with it.
In the case of Blizzard, that talent went on to make some pretty big mistakes though *cough* Hellgate London. Although I think if that game had of released now, in this climate it actually would have fared quite well. Slap an early access on it, "from the creators of diablo etc" > gamers would have quickly defended its unfinished qualities and called you entitled etc. for wanting a complete game.
it released in 2007 in competition with gears, cod4, orange box, crysis, bioshock, world in conflict and witcher.
And despite Runic's games being pretty good and well received.. it was not enough to keep them going. You really need those asshole exec's to make money.
"Talent" is a funny term. I always felt that a developer was similar to a good football team. You need an entire team that works well together to have a great result. A single player leaving can make the team collapse if he was a key component to how the team worked but that single player on his own doesn't make a team and is unlikely to build a great team on his own from fresh players.
With gaming devs, you could see this in practice: big names would start a studio of their own but with only themselves or one or two other vets joining them and mostly new people besides that. Peter Mollyneux & John Romero were notorious for their own studios Lionhead and Ion Storm. Both had some success but also had plenty of fails (I never liked Black & White myself but I'll count it a win, and Deus Ex was a well known win for Ion Storm even though most of their other games were mediocre) whereas Bullfrog and Id Software had almost nothing but wins.
It's a lack of talent. All those great games from Blizzard you loved growing up > yep those developers left a long long time ago. Seeing this problem right across the industry (Except for indies, passion projects, small dev teams at risk of bankruptcy). You can't just replace industry veterans, hire millennial's at cut rates and expect delivery of a same level product.
It's like a band, can't replace all the members, slap a higher number on the end and expect a quality product. EA's ME:A team weren't even skilled enough to animate characters properly.
The company can have biggest talents if development and art etc but at the end of the day management decides, what and how to produce and release. The talents can then leave and new and more complying team can take their place to produce shit.
Activision Blizzard sales were $2.38B, which misses $3.04B estimate.
Activision Blizzard says that -- despite its "record year" -- it's laying off 8% of staff. Last year it had roughly 9,600 employees, which means that 800 people are losing their jobs.
2019 revenue expected to be down -13% YoY
Focus on COD with new game launching in Q4 2019
COD coming to mobile with Tencent developing the game
Sekiro + Crash Team Racing to support Acti pipeline
Blizzard segment driving lower forecast; which suggests that they may not have a big new game launch in the year
The way I see it, every life is a pile of good things and bad things. The good things don’t always soften the bad things, but vice versa, the bad things don’t always spoil the good things and make them unimportant.
Activision/Blizzard taking out the trash. Good on them.
Sounds like it's almost entirely non "core developers". Mostly useless made up positions like "CM of relationships" and a bunch of "esports" related crap.
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