Activision Blizzard facing layoffs.

[fishbowlhead]

Gotta keep those dividends flowing!
I really don't know whats going on in the gaming industry at the moment, but it feels like Satan himself is running the show.
Hollywood doesn't even feel this greedy, unless they hide it better. It would appear as if they don't even care that we all know they're money grabbing gits.
It has all the hallmarks of an under regulated money train, like the banking industry in the 1980s. Dwarfs, strippers and buttered pigs running riot in the offices!

In the process of efficiency the dwarfs & buttered pigs were combined into one process, that’s why Bobby Kotick exists.

[Neon Ignition]

By the looks Activision has to keep those profit levels rising but has realised they lack the IP to do it. They've tied so many of their development studios into supporting a single franchise like CoD that if it falters a little so do about 5 studios with no safety net. Destiny has likely punched a hole in their year looking forward too.

Not to sound too brutal but if Call of Duty's stop featuring single player campaigns... well, they really don't need Infinity Ward anymore or at least don't need them working on CoD.

100% someone is about to be told they're working on a brand new Crash Bandicoot game though

[Digfox]

Gotta keep those dividends flowing!

Actually Shareholder Dividends are up 9% hence the upwards correction in their share prices last night.

By the looks Activision has to keep those profit levels rising but has realised they lack the IP to do it. They've tied so many of their development studios into supporting a single franchise like CoD that if it falters a little so do about 5 studios with no safety net. Destiny has likely punched a hole in their year looking forward too.

The quote on Destiny was quite telling, 'no meaningful income in the forthcoming year'. Not to defend their actions but it seems like this correction is due in part to the loss of a big title on their portfolio as much as flat growth across the other two brands. I guess if they aren't looking at studio acquisitions to plug that gap, increasing dev resources makes sense.

Personally I would like to see a true Diablo sequel that's smashes it out of the park, PVE content for Overwatch, a reinvention of WoW or something new to plug that gap. I'm not confident on that happening though.

100% someone is about to be told they're working on a brand new Crash Bandicoot game though

Yep. Also maybe more Sypro. Although they didn't mention numbers that has done well too.

[Lebowski]

Actually Shareholder Dividends are up 9% hence the upwards correction in their share prices last night.



The quote on Destiny was quite telling, 'no meaningful income in the forthcoming year'. Not to defend their actions but it seems like this correction is due in part to the loss of a big title on their portfolio as much as flat growth across the other two brands. I guess if they aren't looking at studio acquisitions to plug that gap, increasing dev resources makes sense.

Personally I would like to see a true Diablo sequel that's smashes it out of the park, PVE content for Overwatch, a reinvention of WoW or something new to plug that gap. I'm not confident on that happening though.



Yep. Also maybe more Sypro. Although they didn't mention numbers that has done well too.

They really do need to do something with Overwatch the characters have to much personality and life left in them for them to be left to die in a stagnant team death match game. i wouldn't be surprised given that the game has had no meaningfull updates outside of skins and the odd map if a Battle royal isn't in the works though. Apex Legends have kinda beaten them to it and shows that the hero formula can work really well in this type of game.

[Digfox]

Well I did chuckle to myself last night when I saw this Wall Street analyst state that Activision needs 'a battle royale' when discussing the latest results. Wouldn't surprise me either if an OW BR was in development.

[Neon Ignition]

For Activision, give it a couple more months, and the best thing they could do is release Blackout as a permanently Free to Play title. I'd be curious as to how Overwatch is doing but it feels like the buzz over that franchise is already on the wane and as a straight laced BR I'm not sure how much a BR OW entry would add given how basic the level design typically is in the series. It'd be like a first person Fortnite without the building mechanics etc, CoD is likely the better bet.

[Digfox]

I'm not sure they would consider a f2p blackout given they have already sold a lot of BLOPS4 and have a multiplayer-only version of the game out. I think Activision still value their more traditional retail model for COD. And a f2p would set a precedent which might upset one of the few performing franchises they have.

I think OW on Switch has become more likely though.

[Neon Ignition]

I could see it maybe come November when focus moves on to the next Call of Duty maybe, that being said this is a company that still thinks season pass barriers work

[Digfox]

Unless I missed something they didn't talk numbers for BLOPS 4 sales, but stated it didn't do as well as expected. So they made a big thing of Single Player returning for the next COD and who knows maybe they change the model up for COD. But I do think they have an obligation to those existing customers who paid for COD and Season Pass etc. if they were to go f2p for Blackout.

[Neon Ignition]

I do enjoy the irony of Activision and EA laying underperformance issues for CoD and BF partly on single player offerings in the latest games. They shouldn't need a crystal ball to work out that cutting some content will cut some audience.

Though I guess in BF's case it's a less clear target, who goes into a Battlefield expecting a single player campaign of any worth?

[Team Andromeda]

Unless I missed something they didn't talk numbers for BLOPS 4 sales, but stated it didn't do as well as expected. So they made a big thing of Single Player returning for the next COD and who knows maybe they change the model up for COD. But I do think they have an obligation to those existing customers who paid for COD and Season Pass etc. if they were to go f2p for Blackout.

I think Activsion now have the 2 best teams working on the single player campaigns with IW and Sledgehammer and I also like how each team has 3 years to make their entry. I thought Infinite Warfare was increabile and for me the best single player COD game since COD IV.

Also I get how Activsion are a easy target for people to knock, but they've been around since 70's, not many 3rd parties can say that

[Digfox]

Activision is very different company that existed in the 70's, 80's & 90's, before it was went into Bankruptcy (Kotick bought the naming rights and IP and let go of the nearly all the remaining employees). That said I'm not sure many of the major western publishers are popular.

I wonder if the return to Single Player is actually due in-part to the games being on a 3-year development cycle rather than a sudden decision over the last year, i.e. they were already developing SP and simply stayed the course.

[Team Andromeda]

I wonder if the return to Single Player is actually due in-part to the games being on a 3-year development cycle rather than a sudden decision over the last year, i.e. they were already developing SP and simply stayed the course.

It was no doubt the corp looking at the sales of PUBG and wanting some of it and given they have 3 different Teams each with 3 years to make their entry just gave the task to Treyarch, while IW and Sledge work on their single player games (which for me have always been stronger than Treyarch single player COD games)

[Asura]

I do enjoy the irony of Activision and EA laying underperformance issues for CoD and BF partly on single player offerings in the latest games. They shouldn't need a crystal ball to work out that cutting some content will cut some audience.

To be fair to both of them, I know this seems like an obvious answer, but they have detailed measurements of what players actually play in these games. All the publishers do.

The issue, sometimes, is "interpretation", which can be a bit of the "crystal ball" you mention. Like it's easy to see that single-player gameplay accounts for 0.00001% of your audience's total play-time, but it's harder to see how that compares to sales.

One of the problems a lot of these developers are facing is how to effectively "monetise" single-player content. Like in theory, for Battlefield or CoD, you could craft single-player missions and sell them episodically; unfortunately the economics of that don't add up. You need a whole team of people for a duration, with voice-acting, music, level design... It takes too long and too few people buy them.

The supreme example that I've seen discussed, for this - the proverbial pandora's box - wasn't actually "horse armour", but rather that time World of Warcraft added a paid unicorn mount model and sold a million of them, at 8$ apiece. That took two artists a couple of days. Eight million dollars and it's 99.9% profit.

So you end up with this weird dichotomy, where people won't buy a chapter for a story-based game for £20 because they (reasonably) say "but the whole game was £40? Shouldn't this be half as much content again?" but they will buy a weapon skin for £5, even though the economics of that make much less sense. But the weapon skin looks like the De L'Orean for Back to the Future and says "Great Scott!" when you shoot someone.

[Digfox]

I understood the delicious irony [MENTION=345]Superman Falls[/MENTION] referred to, was that whilst EA blames including single player for lack of sales, Activision is trumpeting the return of single player campaign. All while both multiplayer FPSs underperform.