I Bring Nothing to the Table

Bold Words [Game Overview]

Insert another credit, because it’s time for your weekly video game news and you’ve just hit the Game Overview screen.

They have to cut the price, because if they don’t, the attach rates are likely to slow”, he continues. “If we are being realistic, we might have to stop supporting Sony…When we look at 2010 and 2011, we might want to consider if we support the console – and the PSP [portable] too.

Those words were uttered by Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision, last Friday and made huge waves in the gaming world. For the big boss man of the largest video game company in the world to try and throw his weight around like this is certainly surprising.

Everyone agrees that the PS3 is too expensive. It’s a topic covered on almost every podcast and Sony knows it’s what everyone wants. Still, their console is expensive to make and someone in their company thinks that price must not be the limiting factor in their sales. Then again, the recently announced PSP Go was priced at $250, proving that Sony might not quite understand that pricing a new portable at the same price as the Wii (and higher than the Xbox 360 Arcade SKU) might not be the best choice to launch a system reboot.

I can honestly say that no huge publisher has tried to make such a statement as this. For Activision to outright threaten to stop supporting the system and essentially hold Sony hostage is huge. Will they ever make good on this promise? That’s where things get hazy. It’s clear that they must make more money on the platform than it costs to develop for it, otherwise they wouldn’t do it. So it would seem like a stupid business choice not to develop on the system. No, I’m pretty sure that Activision, the new Evil Empire, is simply trying to garner goodwill from gamers. “Hey guys, look at us, we want you guys to be able to buy this system for cheaper. We’re the good guys!”

After that suit over Brütal Legend, all I can say is you don’t fool me Activision.

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Comments

3 responses to “Bold Words [Game Overview]”

  1. Eric Mesa Avatar
    Eric Mesa

    Read about this while I was in Hawaii. One of the articles I read had a Sony rep calling their bluff. Apparently Sony things their sh*t don’t stink, as they say. People will develop for it because otherwise they’ll develop for what? The non-8-core Xbox? The kiddie Wii? Please! At least that seems to be their line of thinking. I think they have a price drop in the works for Christmas. Either that or they have clairvoyance and can see that by Christmas 2009 the recession will not only be over, but we’ll be full swing into an uptick in our economic fortunes. And maybe they all know something we don’t because MS is asking $300+ for the full version of Windows 7.

    Reply
  2. Dan Avatar
    Dan

    It’s perplexing, that’s for sure. I still have no idea how Sony can possibly believe that their console is appropriately priced for the market. With all the losses they’re incurring, you’ve gotta wonder what their thinking is right now.

    Reply
    1. Eric Mesa Avatar
      Eric Mesa

      Perhaps something along the lines of “Why the hell did we have to use the Cell Processor? Technology history is littered with the corpses of platforms that were technologically superior, yet didn’t win. (eg the Atari Lynx – $600 when it first came out, or BeOS – which could run 4 videos at once when Windows and Mac barely could run 1) No one can do that much with it if they want truly cross-platform games and exclusives seem to be dying out. So we have all this expensive hardware and we can’t even make enough money on game licensing to lower the price.”

      Reply

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