Comments on: What is Kotick thinking? If at all…

By: Selling Activision Short? | The Greenskin

Selling Activision Short? | The Greenskin — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 21:35:28 +0000

[...] looking to make a quick buck from but maybe it’s their CEO’s totally ridiculous remarks of late. Maybe he’s done such a good job scaring people away from investing in anything [...]

By: You Are Rated Against Your Hype at Kill Ten Rats

You Are Rated Against Your Hype at Kill Ten Rats — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 17:28:42 +0000

[...] hates this guy. Why? Because “CEO” means “you should know better than some idiot on a forum [...]

By: Jezebeau

Jezebeau — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 14:06:57 +0000

Just think; with that kind of money, they could build hardware built specific to the game. I fully expect the VR goggles from .hack if anyone ever spends this much producing an MMO.

By: The Great PvP Debate « Dark London

The Great PvP Debate « Dark London — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 15:22:04 +0000

[...] have been some pretty shocked reactions at Kotick’s assertions about WoW and the MMO industry, particularly his statement that it would cost anywhere between $500million and a $1billion to [...]

By: Nick

Nick — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 23:06:03 +0000

While perusing MMOGChart, have you noticed something odd?

Runescape: a ftp/ptp, unlicensed MMO with poor graphics takes more of the market share than any other MMO save for WoW.

I used to play runescape. The reason I stopped is because the graphics hurt my eyes. Even after all these years using the exact same gameplay, Runescape retains 6.2% of the market share?

They must be doing something right (and for much, much less than 500 mil).

By: Marcus Riedner

Marcus Riedner — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 20:31:42 +0000

Half a billion to a billion is absolutely insane. Seriously, you start entire INDUSTRIES on that. You find CURES FOR CANCER with that. You sure don’t blow it on a VIDEO GAME. Your ROI is going to suck, no matter how you look at it! Just think about it, you’d need 10 million subscribers paying $10/month for 18 MONTHS to BREAK EVEN.

Remember people, staffing and bandwidth and hardware costs money! Support, the cut from your distribution network, you’d be LUCKY to break even in 18 months with 10 million subscribers.

Even if you go by the industry’s spurious standard source, MMOGChart.org, you can see that this is an absolutely unrealistic proposition. You’re talking about either doubling the market size, or capturing 60%+ of the market share.

Kotick is clearly talking verbal diarrhea. Down hear in reality land, smart players are making MMOGs for under $5 million, and turning tidy profits. When does the Kotick lynch mob form, and where do I sign up.

By: Nicodemus

Nicodemus — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 18:16:18 +0000

My opinion is rapidly becoming:

* World of Warcraft is plateauing, or at least slowing down significantly.
* Kotick will push for a massive (and I mean really massive) budget for a new title (CoD or otherwise) that will take several years, lots of delays, and ultimately be extremely overhyped and equally dismal.

See, its one thing if Kotick blows 20-50M on an MMO…Vivendi/Blizzard can handle a few of those (look at NCSoft as an example). But if he gets his 500M budget (or even 200M) because he suckered the right industry experts, financial analysts, or the public stock market (again, look at his recent comments and who they were directed at), it will be a colossal waste of resources. It shouldn’t take more than 30-50M to build a competitive top tier MMO. A half billion dollars should give you the ability to redefine an entire market, launch a console, and take over a small country. Or create 70+ MMOs.

Anyway, thats what I think. The minute Kotick announces a greenlight on an MMO project with more than 50M budget is when I would sell my activision stock (assuming I owned any).

By: Relmstein

Relmstein — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 15:10:49 +0000

Yeah I’m pretty sure he’s just spreading misconceptions on the MMO market to deter competition. If you look at the curve of subscribers on mmogchart its pretty obvious that World of Warcraft hasn’t reach the peak of its growth yet.

With the churn World of Warcraft has and the constantly growing numbers it means that the game is still bringing in new players. Activision deffinitely doesn’t want some developer to accidentally make another great casual MMO by accident and start claiming these new players.

By: Stropp

Stropp — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 08:11:31 +0000

At the very least, Vivendi is still the owner of Blizzvision. If Kotick makes enough poor decisions, or negatively affects the value of the stock, Vivendi has the option to sack him.

But as you said previously, this could simply be the spreading of FUD to deter competition.