It's not the fault of Kotick people keep buying COD by the millions, if I were the CEO of Activision I would do exactly the same thing, why try making new, risky, original games when turning out the same thing over and over again works? If anything blame the consumers.

The man has a talent for making money, I'll give him that, from a business perspective he's pretty good at what he does. It's only a matter of time before people say "You've gone too far, [censored] you!" and simply stop buying Activision products. How much effect that has is questionable, but pissing off your customers really isn't the best plan long term.

Ding-Ding. We have e winner. :nods:

Okay, so lets say he takes out the cut scenes. How is the game going to make sense? They would basically force you to have to purchase the extra cut scenes so you could actually enjoy the game. How is that fair to a consumer who is already paying a high amount for a game? I won't pay a monthly fee to play CoD. I am not buying the new CoD. I won't buy another Guitar Hero. I'm going to boycott Activision until Kotick is gone or until Activision dies. Kotick reinforces my opinion on a regular basis.

Hah! If that ever happens i'll eat my hat.

And if his plan goes through, what happens to all the cutscene videos on Youtube?...

:banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead:

He's not proposing to delete cutscenes from games, he's just suggesting that maybe they could keep the cutscenes in the games, but market a collection of the cutscenes as its own product, the exact same way that is done with soundtrack CDs.

Are all soundtracks deleted from games just because you can get your hands on the soundtracks on CD? No, of course not!

:slap:

OK, I haven't played an Activision game since Pitfall, so I may be missing something here. But is taking out a cutscene like taking out the narrator from one of Shakespere's plays?

Well, folks, guess it's time to speak by witholding your money and shopping elsewhere.

edit: just read the above post. I could see that happening.

You know what's sad about that?

People would pay for that


Unless somehow they put pressure on youtube to take down any videos for some copyright infringement deal and all the videos get taken down :rolleyes:

I don't know what's sadder, that games have become so reliant on cutscenes that you can turn them into movies, or that there are video game execs stupid enough to find this a marketable product.

What an idiot.

I know you like to play devil's advocate but if you're comparing Activision's business model to Nintendo's business model and finding them similar then there is something wrong there. They are both out to make money, but there's a reason that Nintendo has been a game company since before videogames existed and it's games some of the most iconic and Activision is being svcked dry by someone who only works for short term results without caring about long term consequences because he'll just find another company to repeat the process with. 4kids is dead for a reason.

This has nothing whatsoever to do with playing devil's advocate. People love making Kotick out to be the most evil person ever in the history of mankind, bar none, but if you look at what he has actually said as opposed to what the people who hate him by default think he's said, there is no basis for that notion whatsoever.

Anyone who says he's a bad guy is full of [censored]! Especially compared to the jerks who have been milking Mario for over two decades more than Call of Duty has even existed. As far as I'm concerned, people are just mindlessly jumping onto a bandwagon, as always, just because it's popular, and ignoring anything that could ever point to them being wrong.

I'm sick of people vilifying him, I don't approve of smear campaigns and plain slander, and never will.

A person who turned an almost bankrupt company into the most succesful videogame publisher in the world doesn't strike me as stupid or idiotic.


People nerdraging on internet forums about these kind of things are rarely the people who own stocks in the company.


Kotick was the CEO of Activision since 1991, can't really say that's short term anymore.
And so far Activision isn't being svcked dry or run into the ground, especially with developers like Blizzard and Bungie on board, you can expect them to go strong for a long time.

People here have simply misinterpreted some things, like Lcars pointed out. And it's normal that a large public company like Activision will continue to find new alternative revenue streams.
It's not stupid, it's not evil, it's simply business.

not completely sure how that relates to my post but... the stockholders dont determine the value of their stocks

They do, because supply and demand factors into stocks and if people are desperate to sell their stocks(i.e. when a company is doing badly) they will sell them at much lower prices.
I thought you were talking about this, otherwise I don't understand your comment about how this is something that would destroy the value of their stock.

Except that Mario has been one character in a huge variety of different games because he's a mascot. Did you know that the only time there's been a sequel to a Mario game in many years was Mario Galaxy 2? I don't see the problem with having a mascot character in a huge variety of games that you know... play entirely differently. As opposed to Call of Duty which since CoD4 is pretty much the exact same game with a couple of gimmicky additions.

I disagree with Kotick's business ethics and I won't buy any of Activision's games, so I don't see why I'm jumping on a bandwagon to dislike him because it's ''popular''. It's because I don't like the direction he is working towards the industry going, because it's not good for us, the consumers. You can say it's business all you want, but if they want my money, they're going to have to work for it, and I can only hope other people speak with their wallets too.

And it totally does have to do with you playing devil's advocate, because you do it in every single thread and everyone knows it at this point.

:huh:



Could you please explain to me what you are talking about that he isn't going to take cut scenes out of the game when he is quoted as to saying that he is going: see the bolded part above.

Him playing Devils advocate would imply that he doesn't agree with this. However from I've seen he can understand and agree with it from a business perspective.
The point is, what do you lose as a gamer from them selling another product? There is nothing evil or necessarily bad about that. Those people that are interested in it will buy it, those that aren't won't. There's no reason to call Kotick stupid, evil, a villain, etc for this(I'm not saying you did, but others did).
The consumer in the end will decide what he wants. And so far Kotick has proven to have a good nose when it comes to business decisions.

And yes CoD and WoW are cashcows for them. Every company has a cash cow there's nothing bad about it(and yes Mario is also just a cashcow). And from what I see, even on these forums many people love playing the same things over and over again. Basically what you get is:
What Fallout3 is totally different from Fallout2? NEEEEERDRAAAGE
What Dragon Age2 is not going to be exactly like Dragon Age1? NEEEEEERDRAAAAGE
What MW2 is exactly the same as MW1? NEEEEERDRAAAAAGE

See what I mean? On the one hand people clamour about wanting new innotive products etc, but usually are upset when a new product isn't almost exactly like the old product they used to play.


Sorry but you are absolutly misinterpreting that. He just means to sell something seperately, like an OST.


This actually reminds me of something else that was discussed awhile ago:
Pre-game DLCs(this idea came from EA though). I read lotsa people here saying that it was a terrible idea, nobody would buy it, yadda yadda. Now the first pregame DLC arrived in the form of Dead Rising2: Case Zero and sold over 500k already.
Just saying this to point out that the CEOs everybody loves to hate on often know what they're doing.

A very easy way out when you can't counter the argument, isn't it, stating that my opinion isn't really my opinion?

I don't play devil's advocate, what I do is avoid hopping onto bandwagons. I look at the facts and form an opinion from that, and whenever people are blindly and furiously hating someone, I'll end up defending that person because they are never ever as terrifyingly evil and rotten to the core as the vicious mob seems to think.

There is big difference between the two. Audio adds to the game but I don't play a game for it's audio. What Kotick is stating is that they're going to take cut scenes that were previously in the game and are going to charge me to see something I used to see for free. Audio won't take from the game, if I want I can listen to my own music (as I often do in some games). I can't watch my own cut scenes.

Wait, are you taking it upon yourself to decide what Kotick means, so that you can interpret it in the worst way possible?

I'm gonna go with Kotick as far as understanding the intentions of Kotick is concerned.

Sorry but you are just reading what you want to read here.

This is the same kind of nonsense misinterpretation that happened with the whole "Kotick wants to take the fun out of making video games".
People forget this was stated at a conference, spoken, this is not some written press release, where every word is proof read and carefully evaluated for every possible interpretation. You are putting the emphasis on the wrong words.

I think I'm going to have to go with Lcars and Kal Hohiro on this. While I think it's kind of stupid, it's hardly puppy-kicking, baby [censored] evil.

The OP article link isn't very well written. It's making it sound as if they are going to charge you for the cut scenes separately. I did read it incorrectly the two times I read it.

http://www.geek.com/articles/games/kotick-starcraft-players-would-pay-30-for-cutscenes-repackaged-as-a-movie-20100918/

Now that I'm on the right page:

Is this a good idea?

If you're dumb enough to buy it, I feel bad for you.

Will Activision make money?

Most likely.

I think back to a game I played recently, Star Ocean: The Last Hope (Square Enix). The game had about 15 hours of cut scenes. It was fun to watch through the first time and I enjoyed the game. I could play the game a second time and a third time but there is no way that I would sit for an hour and half and watch the best cut scenes that the game has to offer and not touch my controller and play as my character. This is an idea that will work in the first few games that is offered in and then die. $30 for a movie is already extremely expensive. I pay $9 for netflix and I watch hundreds of movies a month. What makes the cut scene movie so great that it should cost that much money? People are going to buy them to see what they're like and I think it's going to end at that. For $30 I'll just go buy another game from gamestop, and I can guarantee that it won't be an Activision game.