StarCraft 2 Cutscenes Sold As a Movie?
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.
Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox.
Kevin Parrish has over a decade of experience as a writer, editor, and product tester. His work focused on computer hardware, networking equipment, smartphones, tablets, gaming consoles, and other internet-connected devices. His work has appeared in Tom's Hardware, Tom's Guide, Maximum PC, Digital Trends, Android Authority, How-To Geek, Lifewire, and others.
-
theholylancer in short, feed me money for nothingReply
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" -
xelliz Once again another prime example of Kotick being a huge Dbag and trying to milk his consumers for all their money. I own almost all of Blizzards games and many of them came with what he is now planning to charge double to triple the going price for a movie ticket.Reply -
2real business assholes like kotick are ruining gaming. the gaming industry is becoming more and more like the movie industry... the big name studios produce hollywood crap while the indie studio are the ones producing movies worth watching. i find myself playing more indie games (and enjoying them more) now than big name dev gamesReply -
jimmysmitty Blizzard has gotten so used to a nice steady incom from WoW that they need to think of something to make money off of after the game stops selling so much.Reply
Its hard to release a game that people only pay once for when you can make random stuff to have them pay for. -
biao39 The collector edition of SC2 already has that feature, you can play all the cutscenes from the Behind the Scene DVD.Reply -
GenSao Assumming that they add CGI content/scenes that fills the gaps of the exisitng prerended GCI and story, I could consider buying it. As long as they are comparable to current prices for new releases.Reply
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. -
DrInfested theholylancerin short, feed me money for nothingwe 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"Reply
It's not Blizzard. Star Craft 2 is a fantastic game. It's just that Bobby Kotick is a nut.