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Activision's Kotick Discounts Downloadable Games
kukyfrope writes "In a recent interview with the New York Times, Activision Chief Executive Bobby Kotick claims to be optimistic about the future of gaming and the potential revenue of new gamers as many traditional gamers hit their 30's and 40's and are introducing their kids to the world of gaming. While Kotick has a bright outlook, he sees 'full downloadable games' as being 'so far in the future that it's almost incomprehensible.' This would seem to be contradicted by the success of online avenues such as Valve's Steam system, Xbox Live and Nintendo Wii's Virtual Console."
I'm sorry, but the success of the Nintendo Wii's Virtual Console? Has /. suddenly turned time in reverse, and is now duping stories from the future?
That green slime had it coming.
can't read the actual article.
Digital distribition is weak because of a lack of a physical product. That will always be the weak point. For consoles full games for download won't take off for a long time because of storage space. PS3s harddrive is barely big enough for one blueray disc. Highspeed internet can't deliver full games that fast either.
[20:36] wwwdot/.dotorg
It all depends on how you define "Full Game." If the only definition you have is that of a bleeding edge PS3/XBox 360 game that requires 5GB to download then (obviously) the market is too small to really make much money with it; on the other hand if you produce higher-resolution SNES games (say 800x600) you should be able to make tons of games that require less than 16MB to dowload and there is a huge market for that.
While Kotick has a bright outlook, he sees 'full downloadable games' as being 'so far in the future that it's almost incomprehensible.' This would seem to be contradicted by the success of online avenues such as Valve's Steam system, Xbox Live and Nintendo Wii's Virtual Console."
It's not only incomprehensible, but quite ignorant as well. After all, it's only a matter of time before owners can download illegal copies of games using the very console they're going to play them with.
If I were Activision's CEO, I wouldn't be as optimistic as he is... I'd be desperately looking for a way to avoid this.
He obviously doesn't agree: http://dukenukem.typepad.com/game_matters/2006/06/ activisions_ceo.html
He pimps Triton, which is being used for Prey.
The original NYT article has the following quote (emphasis mine):
So, as you can see, his words were taken a bit out of context. His opinion is that small downloadable content like expansions will sell, but not an entire 5GB game. Still a bit misguided, considering the success of Steam, but not as bad as the article makes it out to be.
but for PCs it will become somewhat more common. I think Ive seen a few places online where you can download when you buy a game, I know Id Software does this. Although some people like paper manuals and hardcopies of the serial keys and such.
Haha, these guys are so clueless. They're so stuck in their rut that they can't see a changing paradigm coming up to bite them in the ass. Here's my paraphrasing of his genius quote:
"The idea of full downloadable games using our current bloated development practices is so far in the future that it's almost incomprehensible as an opportunity. I really can't imagine any new developers producing games targeted for digital distribution. The fact that they could produce games with a tighter art pipeline (or increased code-generated art) on a much smaller budget would mean they would eat our profitability for lunch. ('small' is a relative term here, most people would say $1 million dollars is a pretty big amount of money, but for activision that's a very small budget). Hmmm.... you say that's already started to happen in the PC and XBOX Live space? I'm just going to pretend I never heard about that and continue working my army of devs like the wage slaves I know they love to be."
A Multiplayer Strategy Game for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux
about you ... but BitTorrent seems to be working pretty well.
While Kotick has a bright outlook, he sees 'full downloadable games' as being 'so far in the future that it's almost incomprehensible.' This would seem to be contradicted by the success of online avenues such as Valve's Steam system, Xbox Live and Nintendo Wii's Virtual Console."
How so? I see no contradiction there. XBox Live isn't selling full downloadable games, it's selling minigames, like Gauntlet and Uno and little tiny psychadelic arcade games. Virtual Console is effectively doing the same thing, the only games that have been announced for it are emulations of "classic" ROMs like Super Mario Brothers. You can indeed buy a full game on Steam-- Half Life 2-- but that game is simultaneously sold in stores, and by and large Steam is used not to distribute full games, but to distribute usually-small mods to Half Life 2.
Looks like Mr. Activision is right on the money to me.
Perhaps Kotick is correct that the games which his company are producing are not yet suited for download, but that doesn't mean that nobody's games are suited for download.
Here's the key quote from the article, in my opinion:
This is exactly the strategy which has, at times, nearly destroyed the music and film industries -- focus only on copying the last big thing and don't spend any effort at all looking for the next big thing. I truly hope a bunch of net-aware $5-per-game upstarts eat their $50-per-megatitle business for lunch. It'd be the best thing to happen to gaming since I don't know when..
Good! They have declared we don't exist so we can continue to do business in peace.
My website
Man, from the title of this article I thought it was going to be about Activision discounting downloadable games to a price less than a box copy, as obviously their costs would be lower, passing the savings on. I'm still waiting for a company to do this, although I guess Steam sometimes is cheaper online.
So stop using homonyms in the article titles, especially confusing ones. I get dissapointed enough with the shit going on in our world, I don't need slashdot making me think I can get my games cheaper and then dashing my hopes with an opposite story...
P.S. this Kotick guy is an idiot.
I glanced at the headline and thought finally someone is going to discount downloadable games instead of having to pay the same price as the retail version with it's packaging and retail distribution costs. Then I saw that wasn't what the article was about at all. Halflife 2 was a better deal on Steam than retail - you got the older versions of Valve's software as an added bonus and you didn't need to have the CD in the drive (though the cd check was removed later). The software I have seen on Direct2Drive costs the same as retail but you don't get the physical media, manual, or any incentive to buy it that way other than not having to make a trip to the store.
The only reason companies are afraid of downloads is because they know it's going to cut into their sixty-dollar off-the-shelf-games.
Just like articles where some publishers/companies discount so-called "retro-gaming" as being insignifigant in their eyes.
Well, I spent about an hour yesterday playing "Super Mario Brothers 3", and it was just as fun now as it was fifteen years ago. All of the suits making comments like this are so out of touch it's almost comical. They keep going after that shrinking "gotta have the newest, bestest, prettiest game NOW!" market and fail to realize there are tens of millions of us who gave up on gaming years ago because we were sick of all the "shitty but pretty" games where pretty pictures rank far above gameplay.
If only these guys would realize that spending enough to make a feature film on a game just isn't necessary, that paying 50 artists for every 1 actual game mechanics programmer is silly.
They need to look outside the box. Problem is, they created the box, and seem so lost in it that I don't know if anything is going to demonstrate otherwise for them until the box just busts apart and disintergrates.
AE
Upcoming Savage 2 will be downloads, not retail. Coming out this summer. It's a team-based fps where each team has a commander who's playing a rts; commander researches weapons, starts buildings which the fps-style players build, etc. First one came out maybe 3 years ago, and people are still playing and modding. I can't stop playing because of the melee system, which makes it way different from a bunnyhop orgy like cs, and the team-oriented goals, where it actually pays off to use teamwork.
-Skavj "sounds like astroturf, but I swear, I'm a real person! with feelings!" Binsk
Game Company Which Makes It's Money Selling Physical Discs Says Downloads Are Stupid.
Welcome to obvious land. Oh wait, it's slashdot. Or Digg. I can't really tell anymore.
Follow the value train:
1) The company which actually codes the game provides most of the value to the customer. They get a teeny tiny sliver of the profits. (~10% of retail price is a number I've heard batted about)
2) The company which publishes the game absorbs much of the risk of the venture from the developer, does marketing, and perhaps help secure the big-name license that sells a zillion boxes. They get a pretty decent section of the profits. (~30% of the retail price)
3) The retail store provides an entirely fungible service to the customer. Nobody cares where they buy the game. Yet the retail store takes the largest chunk out of that $60. (~60% of the retail price)
Guess which one of these three players doesn't transition that well onto the Interweb? Sure, *today* you cannot totally launch an A or AAA list title without a box somewhere. That won't be true of A/AAA list titles for forever and its not true of niche titles today (hello, $X billion casual gaming market!) The ultimate nightmare of, e.g., Best Buy is when broadband Internet penetration is high enough to make sure the entire core gaming audience has it. Then they're an order form away from irrelevancy with regards to PC gaming, and perhaps even console gaming. When Nintendo sells a copy of, I don't know, Link to the Past over the Wii downloadable content thing they take 98% of the sale (less 2% for the credit card company) rather than ~40% like they did the first time around.
Oh, I'm making this sound a little easier than it is: you have to convince your audience to buy online, you have to market to get people to your website (or some aggregator of downloadable games, like Direct2Drive or Steam), and you have to figure out some way to make gift purchases by mostly uniformed buyers work (what percentage of games are purchased by Mom?). But with "double your profits!!!" being the motivator these are very solvable issues.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.