Telefrog
11-06-2008, 12:53 PM
Gamsutra reports (http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=20984) that Activision Blizzard dropped titles such as Ghostbusters, The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena, 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand and gamer darling Brütal Legend because there was little opportunity of sequels. CEO Bobby Kotick elaborated during a company earnings call.
"With respect to the franchises that don’t have the potential to be exploited every year across every platform, with clear sequel potential that can meet our objectives of, over time, becoming $100 million-plus franchises, that’s a strategy that has worked very well for us," Kotick said.
"It’s something that we have been very disciplined about. So, while there are lots of promise for a lot of these products that we had in the portfolio, I think, generally, our strategy has been to focus -- especially given the increase in development expenditures on the products that have those attributes and characteristics that we know if we release today, we’ll be working on 10 years from now."
Translation: If we can't milk your IP for years, then we have no interest.
"With respect to the franchises that don’t have the potential to be exploited every year across every platform, with clear sequel potential that can meet our objectives of, over time, becoming $100 million-plus franchises, that’s a strategy that has worked very well for us," Kotick said.
"It’s something that we have been very disciplined about. So, while there are lots of promise for a lot of these products that we had in the portfolio, I think, generally, our strategy has been to focus -- especially given the increase in development expenditures on the products that have those attributes and characteristics that we know if we release today, we’ll be working on 10 years from now."
Translation: If we can't milk your IP for years, then we have no interest.