Activision-Blizzard may start selling in-game cutscenes combined as stand-alone movies.
During the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Media, Communications & Entertainment Conference in California, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick said that the company will likely begin selling in-game cutscenes as full movies sometime in the next five years.
Kotick used StarCraft II as an example, saying that the high-quality in-game cinematics could be complied together into one film and distributed to fans digitally.
But the big question is this: would gamers actually buy the movie? After all, they will have already seen a fragmented version by playing through the single-player campaign. However Kotick indicates that such a release would be successful enough to topple any opening weekend box office record thanks to Activision-Blizzard's business model.
"My guess is--unlike film studios that are really stuck with a model that goes through theatrical distribution and takes a significant amount of the profit away--if we were to go to an audience and say 'We have this great hour and a half of linear video that we'd like to make available to you at a $20 or $30 price point,' you'd have the biggest opening weekend of any film ever," he said.
Kotick added that Activision-Blizzard may attempt a movie release using a partner or directly from the publisher itself. "There will be a time where we'll capitalize on the relationship we have with our audience; deliver them something that is really extraordinary and let them consume it directly through us instead of theatrical distribution," he added. "If we were to deliver a film digitally this way, I'd say an extremely high percentage would then go to the theater and watch it again."
Activision-Blizzard may need to consider adding extra content not seen in the game in order to convince gamers to pay an additional $20 to $30.
we just need swtor to knock wow out of the top and then SCII ignored by the pro leagues to knock blizzard down a little so they'd appreciate their customers.
look at steam's meet the stuff, they are HQ and while not exactly a story, I can see if valve wanted to be greedy to charge for them by adding and reusing scenes to it and make it a "movie"
Its hard to release a game that people only pay once for when you can make random stuff to have them pay for.
Many of the ingame scenes are actually done with the in game engine. Blizzard could upgrade these scenes to full CGI. Also with purchase of the BR/DVD a code for some cool ingame stuff.
It's not Blizzard. Star Craft 2 is a fantastic game. It's just that Bobby Kotick is a nut.
(well, I wont because I am lazy, but some can!)
as long as we have decent companies like valve, we'll see plenty of good indie games... just dislike waiting for them, yah know?
*waits for braid 2*
Plus why are you crying about it anyway? If you don't like it then don't buy it. That's the beauty of capitalism, you as a consumer have a choice. I love the comments about greed, if people buy the product then Blizzard is obviously is making a product consumers want.
So if you start a company and sell a product, is that greed? What if said product becomes a huge success and takes you from rags to riches? Is that greed? Oh your right I should only make middle class income then give the rest to the poor that didn't work hard to make it in this world. Get over it, just because you failed to get rich doesn't mean you have to be jealous at others who worked hard to obtain it.