It seems lately that every time Bobby "Possibly Had Sex With Hitler's Ghost" Kotick opens his venomous mouth, he says something thoroughly disgusting. The evil CEO of Activision has laughed about charging high prices for videogames, pushed for a lack of fun in videogame development, and now has demonstrated the joys of squeezing $500 from a $50 game purchase.
"In the last cycle of videogames you spent $50 on a game, played it and took it back to the shop for credit," said the redheaded recidivist at the Deutsche Bank Securities Technology Conference. "Today, we'll [charge] $100 for a guitar. You might add a microphone or drums, you might buy two or three expansions packs, different types of music. Over the life of your ownership you'll probably buy around 25 additional song packs in digital downloads. So, what used to be a $50 sale is a $500 sale today.
"And the best of all margins -- the 25% operating margin business -- has the potential as we can see with World of Warcraft to be a 50% operating margin business. What used to be a low 20s return on invested capital business is now growing to a plus 40% return on invested capital business."
You can almost hear his sense of perverse glee, can't you?
Of course, Kotick is telling investors what they want to hear, but his attitude toward the game industry and public disregard for his customers has been frankly appalling. He is clearly a man who knows that he's a hated, underhanded individual, and seems to actively revel in it. Of course, the gullible fools paying $500 per Guitar Hero installment don't get to hear Kotick's disdain for them, so they'll just keep paying him until he eventually crashes the market.
Contest:
11:00 PM on 09.15.2009
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I've put more that 300 hours into Killzone, and other people put hundreds of hours into COD or Halo or Madden or something... The game is worth a lot more to me than what I paid for it.
How could you insult Hank Scorpio by comparing him to Kotick! Hank is actually a nice guy! Kotick, on the other hand, can barely be classified as a guy at all. He is more of a bubbling evil mass of... matter...
Even a Mr. Burns comparison would be inadequate.
and Brownpig, you are a fool for contributing to this asshole's company
Evil-doers everywhere tremble at his magnificent crepuscular presence, and do-gooders scream as their organs slough onto the wet crimson surface of his nefarious wake.
@xaliqen: way to get out the thesaurus. crepuscular?!? ha ha
@brownpig
You are part of the problem that's killing my favorite media, please turn off your 360, smash it as hard as you can and never ever play any videogame again. (and I'm counting cellphone Bejewed)
I also have to comment every time on his god damn shit eating grin. Fuck that guy.
Or maybe he is a professional troll.
It is the lack of respect for consumers like this scumbag that's doing it.
Stop the presses.
Seriously people, Activision needs to make money to fund future projects. Do you want to play more games in the future? Then the games being released today need to make money.
YOU might not like Guitar Hero, or WoW, but obviously consumers in massive numbers do. When people stop paying $15 a month to play WoW, WoW will stop making money. When people stop buying song DLC and annual releases of Guitar Hero, Activision will stop releasing them.
It is a very simple equation... the success of these products proves the consumer accepts the price and product. If they didn't, they wouldn't be successful.
So what if he is happy about it? It's his job to be successful in these things and promote the company. You want them to be successful and make money too, because it means more awesome games for you to buy down the road.
But Kotick rips-off consumers and then brag about it, money making is not the problem...
@bobyko
*sigh*
Every night he calls forth two succubi so that he can then proceed to extract their tendons with his teeth and drape them around his shoulders as a necklace.
He sleeps in a bed enchanted with the sorrow of dying puppies and sips on a tonic made of eel's blood and the tears of heartbroken shepherds.
Great games? Where the fuck do you people live, Bizarro World!? Buy a vowel and a fucking clue, nimrods.
Okami is a great game.
Shadow Of The Colossus is a great game.
Katamari Damacy is a great game.
Team Fortress 2 is a great game.
Street Fighter is a great game.
Ikaruga is a great game.
NOTHING Activision has made in the past 7 years or so has been anything that I'd call "great" by any fucking stretch. If you call the turds that this asshole produces (as that is an asshole's main function) "great," you need to have your fucking head examined.
Making money is one thing. Making literal shit to make money is another. Watch this company rape the market, for the second time. Kotick is a bastard, and sure, there's a lot of them to be found wherever there's money to be made - but when you're that goddamn blatant about it, there's got to be some fucking justice somewhere down the line for folks like that. Everyone's out to make a profit, but a game should do what else but be fun? If you rip the fun out of it and make something solely for the generation of profit margin, then you rip out the soul of the product you're trying to shill, and people will eventually leave it all high and dry.
It happened in '83. It can happen again.
@ ran24
Bingo.
@ whormongr
Double bingo.
FUCK THE DISAGREERS.
ALSO, COMPANY THINKS YOU'RE A BUNCH OF RETARDS FOR BUYING THE SHIT.
SO DO WE.
Still buying MW2. Don't play WoW or Guitar Hero.
That's okay, Kotick was too busy flaying the skin from pandas and newborns to take any classes whatsoever.
50% operating margins WITHOUT a subscription fee like in WoW? Is that why he so badly feels the need to jack game prices up?! I want to smash cheap plastic instrument peripherals in his face.
because of this
But when the CEO of a company publically states that he only wants Franchies that can be exploited till their so completely and utterly worthless...and then trying to rise the prices of these exploited games as high as he possibly can? That's crossing the line, getting into a Veyron and doing top speed to get as far away from the line as quick as possible.
Hell I've spent $196 AUD on Fallout 3, Special Edition and 5 DLC Packs....why? Because it was worth it, it added depth to the game and extended its life.
But things like Guitar Hero, that is have 2 or 3 games a year that are merely reskinned versions of the previous game and seem to add little to no new features per incarnation save the music......and releasing them with new instruments every time...thats just...yeah.
Eh, Im just gonna buy my Activision Games 2nd hand now...then trade them in to buy new copies of games from Ubi and EA and the likes that are worth the money.
They're going to have to spike Kotick's coffee with LSD and release him onto the freeway to get their fans back...
So yeah. Publishers like money. They're just weird like that.
That said I know I have poured a shit ton of money into Rock Band. I have no problem with that.
And if possible your eyes too......
I gotta print a picture of him and stick it on my punching bag..
Check.