Activision Wants Consoles to be Replaced by PCs
So basically, he just wants to make games for PC that will be played from the couch.
Today, we live in a multiplatform world. Many games that hit the PlayStation 3 are also on the Xbox 360, and some of those even make it to the PC. Due to hardware constraints, the Wii may get a watered down version of the software.
Activision, one of the leading cross platform publishers, wishes to move away from the "walled gardens" set by the likes of Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo.
Bobby Kotick, Activision CEO, told the Financial Times that it believes that the majority of Xbox Live subscribers pay Microsoft for the Xbox 360 online service just to play Modern Warfare – a subscription fee that Activision doesn't get any share of.
"We've heard that 60 per cent of [Microsoft's] subscribers are principally on Live because of Call of Duty," Kotick told FT. "We don't really participate financially in that income stream. We would really like to be able to provide much more value to those millions of players playing on Live, but it's not our network."
Of course, Activision has still made a tidy sum from the sales of Modern Warfare 2 and the $15 map packs that it inevitably sells millions of.
Kotick's solution to this is simply to turn to the PC, where it can set its own model for pricing – not unlike what Blizzard has done with World of Warcraft and Battle.net. He added that Activision would "very aggressively" support the likes of HP and Dell in any effort of making an easy 'plug-and-play' PC that would hook up directly to the TV.
(via GameSpot.)
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eklipz330 what, they want it on pc so THEY can charge us for it? screw you activision. stay on ur consoleReply -
atdhe Although I'm a PC fan, hate consoles, he is basically saying, we want more money...Reply
Well, as long as it benefits us, the consumers, I'm ok with it. -
noodlegts Every time that man speaks I kind of throw up in my mouth a little bit.Reply
So he wants a PC that plays like a console so Activision can charge its own subscription fee for games that have been deteriorating in quality for some time now...
Maybe if you just made good games, you could sell a lot of them rather than trying to squeeze money out of every point in the system. I mean, I bought BFBC2 JUST because it had dedicated servers and it was Modern Warfare-ish. Thats a lot of extra sales Activision could have made. -
hot74rod2003 if they would get away from console that would be great for us pc gamers!!!! the programers woud be able to concentrate and put all their time into pc,,,making a better overall game!Reply -
Regulas To add to my comment, this would spur the development and focus back to the PC for games, get away from port jobs. Still not buying SC2 because of their 3 part game with no LAN support.Reply -
tokenz regulasWOW, suddenly I am liking Activision.Reply
Why so they can charge you 60 for a game, 15 for a map pack, and now they want to charge a subscription fee on top of it. Hey activision make a game that is fun. Like MW2 was for the first 5 minutes before everyone started cheating.