Be forewarned gamers, for Bobby Kotick really wants to find more ways to slide his hands into your wallets. The CEO of Activision-Blizzard is in the news yet again, making some more claims that rub a lot of people the wrong way. This time he stirs up controversy by expressing how he really feels about Microsoft's online business model.
"We’ve heard that 60 per cent of [Microsoft’s] subscribers are principally on Live because of Call of Duty."
Okay, Kotick slow your roll right there captain. I'm not entirely sure where he's getting his figures from. I will admit that there are a lot of Call of Duty heads out there, it's one of the best selling games on XBOX; that much is undeniable. But to pretend like 60 percent of XBOX live subcribers are paying $50 USD a year because of Call of Duty is laughable. Oh XBOX live, where were you before Modern Warfare? Oh right, it was doing just fine.
"We don’t really participate financially in that income stream. We would really like to be able to provide much more value to those millions of players playing on Live, but it’s not our network."
Nevermind the fact that you're putting out map packs with a chunk of old content, and buggy new content and still slapping a $15 USD on them. Nevermind the fact that your other console franchises like Guitar Hero, and Tony Hawk come with the cost of an arm and a leg due to the fact that you need to pay for the game-specific controller to play the game. Nevermind the fact that you have World of Warcraft, where you have millions of users shelling out $15 USD a month in order to continue playing the game. Yes, the regulations that Microsoft places on game developers in regards to downloadable content can be dissapointing at times, and often times they'd rather charge you money for some things that should pretty much be free, but the answer to this is absolutely not letting a different corporation come in and nickel-and-dime the gamers. If anybody should be complaining about XBL's income stream, its the gamers, not the CEO of one of the biggest developers in the business.
""Mr Kotick sees an opportunity to break the consoles’ “walled gardens with new gamer-friendly PCs, designed to be plugged into the television."
Gamer friendly PCs, designed to be plugged into the television huh? Oh, you mean CONSOLES, right? I mean, a console is essentially a gamer-friendly PC that's designed to be plugged into the television. The thing that keeps consoles from being as advanced as PCs is that you can buy a PC and change the insides to make them stronger all you want to. Consoles aren't optimized so that you can upgrade the hardware inside. That being said, a good bet for the next step in consoles should be hardware that's readily upgradeable. As much as I'd love to see that link between console and PC gamers, I would hate to see such a good thing exploited by greedy people who seem to just want to charge you a monthly fee to play Call of Duty. This is what's wrong with the industry today.
"Mr Kotick is excited by Microsoft’s motion-sensing controller. XBOX Kinect dispenses with the hand-held joystick in favour of a camera and microphone. He hopes Kinect will help revive the peripherals market along the lines of Activision’s Guitar Hero and DJ Hero."
Right after calling consoles "walled gardens" he goes on to talk about how excited he is about finding a way to make you pay a lot of money to play with the Kinect. Way to make it clear and obvious that all you care about is greenbacks, Kotick. For someone who just said not to long ago that PC is responsible for about 70 percent of Activision-Blizzard's income, Kotick sure does seem interested in finding some way to exploit the console gamers, seeing as how he doesn't feel like he's getting a "fair share" out of Microsoft's XBOX live profits. This is another scenario between developers and Microsoft that could afford to see some change, but again, letting someone else in to nickel-and-dime the gamers is not the answer.
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