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Forums - Sales Discussion - Activision calls for console price cuts

gurglesletch on 13 February 2010

Activision = failed bully




Get your Portable ID!

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Squilliam on 13 February 2010
hsrob said:
Squilliam said:
RolStoppable said:
What the industry needs to improve its health are better games. Software sells hardware.

What Australia needs are better Australians!

Perhaps, but the deluge of Kiwis sure as hell isn't helping :P

Kiwis are the best part of Australia.



Tease.

Cross-X on 13 February 2010

Activision is really getting better at being arrogant aren't they?



PlayerX on 13 February 2010

Lol @ Activision



Where I walk Dead Bodies lay behind. 

.jayderyu on 13 February 2010
vaio said:

As Morhaime eyes market opportunities from motion control innovations

Activision-Blizzard insists that the game industry can still grow despite the global economic gloom – just as long as the market sees more hardware price cuts.

Speaking at Activision-Blizzard’s earnings call, Blizzard president Michael Morhaime said that the more affordable consoles were key to improving the industry’s health.

“If you look at consoles, I think you are going to need to see hardware price declines given the economic uncertainties that we have,” he said.

Morhaime added that game studios need to take advantage of the potential presented in both Sony and Microsoft’s motion controllers.

“You are going to need to see product innovations,” he said. “And as you look at some of the new user interfaces that are coming out, I think those are certainly going to deliver some interesting product innovation.”

Translation:

We only want to focus on developing on PS3 and Xbox360. Though we feel it doesn't have the install base of the PS2. So we want the a price cut to balance off our high internal budget games to sell it a bigger market.



Squilliam: On Vgcharts its a commonly accepted practice to twist the bounds of plausibility in order to support your argument or agenda so I think its pretty cool that this gives me the precedent to say whatever I damn well please.

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Hephaestos on 13 February 2010

didn't they say this lat summer already?

anyways... MW price up , consoles down.... how logical....



OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

C_Hollomon on 13 February 2010

Not this shit again. Didn't they made a billion from MW2 and they still not happy. How about lowing the cost of the games. Besides it don't cost them much to make a COD game every year. They are getting too greedy now.



Pristine20 on 13 February 2010

lol, the guys who can't make a profit after selling 15 mln copies of one game are trying to tell other how to run their business...ironic.



"Dr. Tenma, according to you, lives are equal. That's why I live today. But you must have realised it by now...the only thing people are equal in is death"---Johann Liebert (MONSTER)

"WAR is a racket. It always has been.

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives"---Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler

Reasonable on 14 February 2010
heruamon said:
Reasonable said:
heruamon said:
Errrr....EA's boss said something similiar about a week ago...Price cuts for consoles were too little too late...

Of course they did.  It's like those who sell cars to make money and those who sell petrol.  If I sell petrol so far as I'm concerned (in purest terms) the cheaper cars are the better - and the unrealizable ideal would be if they were free.  That way I get to sell more petrol and make more money.

If I'm EA or Activision or any publisher the cheaper the consoles are the better from my point of view.  It's not my problem MS and Sony, for example, put in expensive tech or have to sell at a loss - I sell games and the more consoles sold the better.  Simple price elasticity indicates the cheaper something is the more it will sell (ignorning other complications and underlying demand  and market size of course) and therefore the cheaper the better for the HW to produce a bigger market for the games.

The caveat for the console makers (and the complication) is they get a cut on the games, too (so far as I'm aware).  Otherwise the situation would reverse nicely and they'd want games to be free to encourage the most people to buy the console to get at them.  I imagine that is the nub of the situation which makes EA, etc. feel they have a fair claim on the HW side as they only make money on the games while in theory the console makers can make money on the HW and the consoles.  Of course, the fact the console might be sold at a loss is the other complication as the console makers then need to balance the money from more games vs the loss from more consoles to try and pick the sweet spot.

 

To me...they should be taking a longer term view, and encourage the console makers to more improvements to software, and to keep the generations longer..that way, developmental cost are lower for software, and install base is higher.  We really should see new consoles for another 3 years a minimum....

I agree 100%.  The better route to start now is looking at the SDK at development approaches to reduce the cost of development.  I think id stated recently this should be the focus currently, reducing the cost to produce the game in the first place rather than raising game prices or selling consoles at a loss.

I look at the Crytek development tools for example, with their very fast and intuitive level building where you can swap with the press of a button from editing to play mode and back, or LBP which is essentially a game built on its own development SDK, and I think that's what we need more of.

Imagine if the tools allowed for games like Gears and Uncharted to be made at half the cost, and smaller games at a fraction of the cost, that would have better long lasting impact.

BTW in my comment I wasn't agreeing with the situation, merely noting the situation as I observe it.  You point is spot on though IMHO.



Try to be reasonable... its easier than you think...

FaRmLaNd on 14 February 2010

Considering most of their money is made from wow I doubt it'd do that much...