Rumour: Microsoft in frame to buy Activision majority share

[zarx]

Aielyn said:

zarx said:
Ubisoft have 8 different studios working on Assassin's Creed as well... You say that they are putting all their Activision devs into one basket yet everything else they do somehow doesn't count because it's not as big as CoD. Of course most of their resources are in their biggest franchise and of course their other projects aren't as big as CoD, if they were they would get the same number of resources. Activision also have their licenced games, pubilshing of 3rd party games, Tony Hawk HD, and the up and comming Skylanders.

What exactly would you have them do may I ask?

I don't see why Time Warner would really want to mess with them TBH not until they stop making money hand over fist anyway.

Internal Ubisoft studios working on Assassin's Creed: Ubisoft Montreal, Ubisoft Sofia. Also some minor assistance work by some of Ubisoft's obscure studios (Ubisoft Singapore, for example). Activision's biggest studios are all working on CoD.

If MS were to buy Activision, it is likely that most licensed games would be lost - licensed games usually have to be multiplatform as part of the deal (there are, of course, exceptions). Third party publishing by Activision would simply move to another publisher more likely than not (except where deals lock them in), and those companies would not continue having Activision publish if MS were to in any way negatively impact sales of their games on other systems (let's be blunt - if Activision were bought by MS, and Bungie wanted to make multiplatform games, they'd probably find a way out of the deal, rather than have the non-MS versions of their games treated as inferior).

I already pointed out the way that Tony Hawk has been driven into the ground. Note that the original developer of Tony Hawk games was later moved to Guitar Hero, and then to CoD. Activision now has an external developer, Robomodo, making Tony Hawk games. And Tony Hawk HD isn't likely to do any better than other recent Tony Hawk titles on PS3/360. The best-selling Tony Hawk on PS3 is Project 8 at 560,000, and on 360 is RIDE at a similar number. The original game sold over 5 million on Playstation alone.

And Skylanders, as I pointed out, isn't really "up and coming" - there's no indication, at this point, that the second entry will do significantly better than the first one.

So, what would I have them do? I'd have them put either Infinity Ward or Treyarch on the task of creating a new IP that isn't Call of Duty (I'd probably try to set up a rolling schedule, where every third year, CoD is skipped in favour of a new IP, alternating whether it's IW or Treyarch that makes it). I'd have had them put Neversoft on the task of coming up with a new Hero game with some innovation (before it died), and would now task them with coming up with a new, innovative music-based game franchise. I'd have had them put Sledgehammer Games on the job of creating a darker game in the survival horror type of realm, perhaps with instructions to put some new twist on the genre. I'd have had them put Raven Software on the task of making a new Heretic or Hexen game and reviving that series (or I'd give that franchise ot Sledgehammer Games, and have Raven Software work on making a new IP).

I note that, at the very least, Activision Leeds will be making a new Pitfall game... but that's just one title, before they focus on handheld CoD games. I probably would have had Activision Leeds work on reviving some older IPs as their main task - start with Pitfall, but then continue on to Crash Bandicoot, MechWarrior, River Raid, and Zork, and any others they could think of. Work on coming up with new games in each franchise, to try to kickstart them back into action.

List of Ubisoft studios attached to AC, Monteal, Ubisoft Annecy, Ubisoft Singapore, Ubisoft Bucharest, Ubisoft Quebec, and Ubisoft Massive. So 6 rather than 8 but still that is a lot of studios. 

So your plan to make Activision more successful is to make less of the best selling franchise so they can work on franchises that have proven to sell less and new IPs that may or may not be successful. Both of which would cost more to develop than another CoD. Seems like a terrible plan to me.