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Activision Wants Consoles To Be Replaced By PCs
thsoundman writes with this excerpt from thegamersblog:
"We live in a world where we have multiple platforms for gaming: PC, PS3, 360, Wii, etc. Each platform has varying amounts of power when it comes to playing games. Activision, one of the leading cross-platform publishers, wishes to move away from the 'walled gardens' set by Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo. ... [Activision CEO Bobby] Kotick’s solution is 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. Kotick stated that Activision would 'very aggressively' support the likes of HP and Dell in any attempt at making an easy 'plug-and-play' PC that would hook up directly to the TV."
There are no shortage of companies that want to tinker and salivate over how Blizzard's business model works. It's a game, direct to consumer, that has a monthly recurring fee with a very nice retention rate. So far, everyone has been absolutely god awful at pulling this off. The desiccated and dismantled battlefield of competitors goes to show, Blizzard has magic that isn't easy to reproduce
I think the closest analog that Activision could come to is Steam. Yet again, deeply entrenched business model, direct to consumer with a nice retention rate.
What Activision wants is control over the entire food chain. They are neither ready, nor well developed enough to jump from a business model they know incredibly well, to what is working on a, very profitable basis, but across a very, very narrow list of businesses that pull it off.
The best thing Activision could do right now is ditch the idea of a PC under the tv. People for generations of games have made a very clear delineation for where they want their pc's and where they want on their consoles. And any company such as a Dell or an HP would be complete morons to go after that failed market again, and again.
What Activision needs to do, is sit down with whoever they have doing arcade games. Take that, pop out a Steam like client, and make it a)not a crippled, bloated piece of shit b) not DRM'd to the point where you're screwing with your call center numbers by increasing traffic off a small step into the market and finally c)make it compelling.
God the number of amazing indie developers out there that would kill to have Activision's resources behind their projects, without Activision being a general corporate pain in the ass... Go for the small market see what you can do there, it's your test pool. If you can't work out strategy there, then you're not going to do it where the big fish play. Remember, small nimble teams with experience.
Then again, since when has Activision listened to anyone screaming "NO THAT'S A HORRIBLE IDEA, WOULD YOU PLEASE NOT DO THAT" and then watched whatever they've tried doing bomb, and tumble into disaster.
This still affects MW2. Recently they released a second multiplayer level DLC and changed some of the gamemodes (added a "pure" gamemode with no killstreak rewards).
First of all if you want to play the new maps you have to play them in specific gamemode that rotates between team deatchmatch, demolition, sabotage and all the other modes. You cannot select the gamemode you like, but have to play those you hate too. Of course this isn't told on the sales page, but at least this time around I knew it will be the same thing and did not buy the DLC. They will probably be available in a month or two for the other gamemodes, but the funny thing is that those who don't have the DLC cannot join the games that have the DLC. This devalues the game for the old players, as they have much less people to play with and possibly can't even find a game to join.
Secondly, they removed Capture The Flag gamemode to make room for the "pure" gamemode. It was my favorite one with Sabotage, but now I cannot select it. Obviously this would had not been a problem with dedicated servers where the server admin could choose it freely.
Then theres also the cheaters.
It just sickens me how they ruined otherwise good multiplayer game in their pursue for more cash.
because they are based on Adobe Flash! That's why people are so vocal about iPhone not having Flash because it's the leading platform for "low spec" PC games... sure the graphics are simple, but it's the same game everywhere. There are far more people playing Scrabble, Farmville, or Bejewled for 15-30 minutes at a time than playing the "AAA" console games.