Bobby Kotick is the Devil. Perhaps not in the literal sense of having scaly red skin or giant horns, but he has shown that he is capable and more than willing to suck the soul out of any franchise he feels he and Activision can milk for every single dime its worth before tossing it's empty carcass to the side.
So in reality, he's more like Galactus than the Devil.
Regardless, Kotick has helped in the complete roll-reversal of the two big game publishers. After all, a mere five years ago Activision was being hailed for its new and original IPs while Electronic Arts, the studio now publishing Mirror's Edge, Dead Space and Brütal Legend, was busy driving the Need for Speed and 007 franchises into the dirt.
A new Call of Duty game that isn't Modern Warfare 4 may be coming, and the surprise re-emergence of Warzone Mobile could be crucial to it.
Microsoft reportedly lost over $300 million in Xbox and PC sales by putting Call of Duty on Game Pass, raising concerns over the subscription model’s long-term impact.
There are some reports that in March 2023, Microsoft told a court, "Game Pass prices will not increase as a result of the [Microsoft-Activision] Merger."
If true, massive hypocrite .
If this one franchise is the reason for the game pass price increases, then just leave it off game pass and not make people who don't play COD foot the bill for a game they will never play, like me.
Talk about stupid business decisions.
Honestly fuck em dude, they are constantly trying to monopolize the industry instead of just competing.
Exactly. Keep putting their regular games on GPU day one but big budget games that are very popular like COD should not release on GPU day one, maybe 9 months or a year later once they profit from sales.
I don't know if this is a stupid decision. Hear me out. I saw someone comment that it was time to cancel GP and MS would do a 180 like usual. It may be too late this time. It's the history of those other 180s that gives me some doubts about them doing it again or this being a stupid decision versus a cold calculation.
Despite never being the dominant brand, Xbox has at various times tried to push wildly unpopular changes on their customers when they thought they were in a position to get away with it. The 180s came because they overplayed their hand. Customers had options. They lost customers to PS because of the Xbox One launch plans. Anyone who moved to PS4 and stopped gaming on Xbox was a total loss for Xbox.
Customers still have options. The problem for GP subscribers is that most of those options are better for MS than continuing to offer GP as it was before and at the old pricing. Their fans cheered on their acquisitions. Some petitioned regulatory authorities to let the ABK merger happen. Congrats. They are now a dominant 3rd party publisher. Those other options gamers could threaten them with before now work to Xbox's favor.
Other than quitting their games entirely, which now includes ABK, Bethesda, and whatever else they gobbled up, what are upset GP subscribers going to do about it? You can suck it up and eat the price hike. They win. You can cancel GP and buy Xbox games instead. They come out ahead. You can switch to PS, Nintendo, or Steam. So? You'll be paying more for their games their than you were paying for GP, and are they really that committed to continuing to manufacture hardware (in the traditional sense) anyway?
Edit: Making matters worse is that this is likely being driven by pressure from MS, which has increased scrutiny of Xbox since the ABK acquisition.
The price would have increased anyway, which was already planned, with or without COD. They didn't lie about anything. You just misunderstood the answer.
@maximusprime:” There are some reports that in March 2023, Microsoft told a court, "Game Pass prices will not increase as a result of the [Microsoft-Activision] Merger."
If true, massive hypocrite .“
.
.
The problem is that you can buy a bakery and tell the community you won’t raise the prices because of the purchase then turn around and raise the prices then say it’s because the ingredients prices when up and be technically telling the truth.
.
Unless the courts would had a agreement in paper that the prices wouldn’t go up for example 5 years there’s no way to enforce it
Edited for typos
If this is true, this might be a case of taking a big risk gone wrong.
Is that why they always say revenue and not profit??
My question is, even though they lost 300 million in sales, were they able to offset it.
We might never know.
I don't know about you all, but, while that is a lot of money, that's less than I would expect. The totality of game pass users on two platforms playing Call of Duty results in just 300M?
Am I crazy to say that feels like an unusually low amount of revenue?
It is but for pc gamepass only works on the Microsoft store. Majority of pc gamers don't use any other storefront other than steam. So they wouldn't of sold much on the Microsoft store anyways.
That leaves Xbox one and Xbox Series. $300m does seem low.
Well, being that Microsoft is the lowest out of the platforms that sell the game..
Buying Activision, in long term, made up the loss of game sales of said game. By a mile.
But, being cod is tanking as of right now, will be interesting to see if Microsoft can actually save a franchise rather than destroy it.
They just raised the price of GamePass knowing they would piss off their customers.
You now know - they didn't offset it.
I’ve been saying for years, you just can’t trust MS period.
1 simple rule, don’t trust MS, act accordingly.
The price would have increased anyway, which was already planned, with or without COD. They didn't lie about anything. You just misunderstood the answer.
Which is an even bigger reason as to why you can't trust them, they play with semantics instead of being honest and straight forward. Your comment doesnt help their case by putting the blame on the consumer for what and how they said what they said.
Good, I had hoped Microsoft would be better for Activision and Blizzard than Kotick running the show but that would be expecting Microsoft to be competent at managing studios.
After rumors the past week; Paramount has confirmed a deal for a Call of Duty movie.
Don't give them ideas..I dont need slow motion running and explosions. It would be like JJ Abrama and his lenses flare.
Write generic soldiers doing military stuff movie, slap Call of Duty on it, voila! Totally worked for Until Dawn.
They should call DC for the abandoned Sgt. Rock script if they are going to be lazy. Issue is do they go WW2, Modern Warfare, Black Ops, etc.. They could do Ghosts, Advanced Warfare, or Infinite.. ot use my Idea; Civil Warfare..muskets that fire one shot and takes time to reload..bayonet charges, cannon volley reward streaks.
Until Dawn was surprisingly a enjoyable movie. I won't shout from the rooftops about it, but it was a nice Friday night out with the wife surprise...very fun and neatly done movie.
What I saw of it while covering WonderCon looked interesting. They did not screen for the press so I will see it when it streams.
Eh. It was mediocre. My problem with it, as it relates to this topic, is that it had absolutely nothing to do with the game. It was a 'trapped college people' horror movie with the game name slapped on it.
@Christopher
**Spoiler**
Not to ruin it, but do you recall the end? they set it up for the next movie, strongly implying the next movie will be based on the game.
I recall reading a treatment for a call of duty film about ghost and was pretty impressed. I’m not sure if it was real or not. I haven’t been able to find it.
It's either going to be a generic ww2 movie or Nikki Minaj will fight through bevis and butthead to kill a drone leader
There is no inbetween
Skydance is in charge now so it could be closer to their work like Mission Impossible.
lol
Barring the Modern Warfare set of games, I have no occasion to buy any of Activision's games.