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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.
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
"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."
This already happens with any console that has a mod chip or other way to load CDR/DVDR backups. PS1, PS2, Dreamcast, Xbox and even Gamecube games are pirated online via both torrents and newsgroups.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
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..
Steam's offerings are growing. Aside from the normal Valve software you can purchase games like Dangerous Waters, Darwinia and Space Empires IV.
Direct 2 Drive has a much larger selection of games including recent full blown titles like Hitman Blood Money and Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter. I'm not exactly sure why people would pay for games this way as the price is the same as a store bought one.
Stardock's Totalgaming.net offers full games for purchase, including Galactic Civilizations 2. While a number of the games are smaller, indie releases, there are some older titles from large publishers.
Direct distribution may be in it's infancy and mostly focused on smaller or independant games, but there are definately some companies on the PC side trying to make it work.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
I think most downloads are happening on PCs rather then on the console itself.
Stardock's Totalgaming.net offers full games for purchase, including Galactic Civilizations 2. While a number of the games are smaller, indie releases, there are some older titles from large publishers.
It must also be pointed out that all of the games offered on Totalgaming.net are devoid of DRM.
If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.
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.
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