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Squilliam on 20 July 2009
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Viper1 said:
Squilliam said:

Developers like Infinity Ward have a lot of power. The real conversation goes something like this:

Activision: Hey, you're making the Wii version?

Infinity Ward: Nope!

Activision: Ok, so hows the spa treatment going for you guys? Did your company cars meet your satisfaction?

Even if Infinity Ward were  200 man studio, they'd make a million per year per person at least on these guys and since there are fewer than 200 guys they'd make more than a million $. 

The studios heart was formed by the Medal of Honour team walking from Electronic Arts, they can easily do it again because they have done it before. So no they wouldn't take the series from Infinity Ward because the series would die without their input and leave a noticeable hole in Activisions bottom line.

Im willing to bet if they hand a tantrum and said 'we don't want to work on the PS3 version nomore' Activision would consider it.

So don't like the Wii, they don't want to make for the Wii, Wii game no get made. Pretty simple stuff really.

It doesn't work this way.  The publisher in this case (as in most) owns the IP, supplies the money and writes the contracts.   If Activision includes Wii in the contract IW will make a Wii build.  End of story.  Some of you guys take the business aspect out of this business.   The idea that a whole company can tell their parent company (who owns the IP, supplies the money and writes the contracts) no with regards to a commission is laughable.

Also, the employees of IW are hardly paid $1 million per year.  Again that's laughable.  Perhaps Vince Zampella rolls that deep but the other 90 something employees do not make $1 million per year.  Not even close.

Finally, like I've already stated several times IW did indeed at one point have something regarding the Wii and MW2.  What became of it is unknown but it's certainly not as though they started work on the Wii SKU and IW just decided to stop for no reason other than bias against the SKU.  Something interrrupted development.   Perhaps it wasn't moving along fast enough, the Wii couldn't handle the upgraded engine well enough, the development of a MW double pack as someone suggested or various other reasons.   All business in nature.

With the sales of the last one then I guess the Wii version would be the first choice to get bumped off if they ran into any development delays or difficulty. Also I was talking about how much value each employee bought to the company, but then again its really just the design and operations team which are important in the company.

This business is different, the value is in the people and keeping the people happy, especially the guys who make the biggest selling yearly franchise of theirs is probably of greatest importance. If those people walk then the I.P will be close to worthless in a few years. So for that reason if one of the big guys at IW decides that they don't like the Wii or don't want to support it they could very well get their way. If they decided to walk they would have a dozen job offers inside a week. We're talking important people, not some machinary which Activision owns.

Its a simple cost benefit really. If the cost of keeping inner core of IW happy is < than the gain from selling millions of copies of Call of Duty then they will accede to those demands.



Tease.