Post by Steve Farrelly @ 10:56am 06/07/10 | 31 Comments
Speaking with the Financial Times, Kotick has once again brought up his desire to milk the most out of the success of Call of Duty, suggesting that he has "heard" that 60% of subscribers to Xbox Live are there solely for Call of Duty adding that he would "really like to be able to provide much more value to those millions of players playing on Live, but it's not our network."
The solution? According to Kotick it's to infiltrate the [console's] "walled gardens with new gamer-friendly PCs, designed to be plugged into the television. PCs have long been used for online play, but PC gaming remains niche when the games industry needs to widen its appeal." He also said Activision would aggressively support HP and Dell in getting such machines to market and in gamers' hands.
I'm not sure I agree that 60% of all Xbox Live usage is due solely to Modern Warfare 2, but a direct subscription model for the PC platform *could* mean a revised look at dedicated servers, and more stable play. Though with a service like Xbox Live, a single subscription for a year allows for play with any game whereas Kotick's idea would obviously lock people into Acti games only.
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Posted 11:03am 06/7/10
REVOLUTIONARY!
Posted 11:03am 06/7/10
Posted 11:06am 06/7/10
Posted 11:08am 06/7/10
Posted 11:09am 06/7/10
Posted 11:12am 06/7/10
Just don't f*** it up, or you guys might then get a visit from his O-ren Ishii.
Posted 11:15am 06/7/10
He's nuts.
Posted 11:31am 06/7/10
What he's proposing is exactly what MS should have done instead of Games for Windows, actually get some tailored PC hardware out there at a reasonable price point, and make the systems specs the lowest common denominator for PC game development until the consoles are ready to move forward.
As long as it's kept nice and open and not locked down from any form of modification like consoles are, and assuming they can actually sell them for more than they cost to manufacture, it could be a real winner.
Posted 11:47am 06/7/10
Posted 11:59am 06/7/10
Posted 12:34pm 06/7/10
Posted 01:49pm 06/7/10
He wants a subscription based console for Activision because they don't get any money for Xbox live except for all the downloadable content they flog off to everyone and WOW makes them a s***load on PC.
And these superdooper PCs that can be plugged into a TV from HP and DELL LOL
Posted 02:10pm 06/7/10
Posted 02:38pm 06/7/10
PC hooked up to the television to play games you say?
If Activision's only concern is capturing CoD players from XBox they can even call it the Ex XBox Box.
Posted 02:42pm 06/7/10
You don't just 'say' what he does to investors to keep them happy then ignore your promises, and this conversation has been doing the rounds since last year, so it's highly likely something is in the wind
Posted 02:45pm 06/7/10
hahaha.
Posted 03:05pm 06/7/10
In other words feature less. I find my current PC friendly enough thanks Bobby. Only positives to come from this would be less/no cheating & piracy but onlive is several steps ahead already.
Also would it still be a PC if it was just a COD box plugged into a TV or just a gimped console?
Posted 02:58pm 06/7/10
Posted 03:08pm 06/7/10
Seems you are following.
Posted 03:39pm 06/7/10
Just like emo, this will eventually phase out for the next cool thing; good marketing combined with luck might have made it cool, but no phase holds forever, yet Activision seem to be planning like it will. I really wonder if Activision will wonder what suddenly happened to all of their sales.
Posted 03:59pm 06/7/10
Posted 04:33pm 06/7/10
The whole 'jock' playing multiplayer online was around when the first Halo broke - it's nothing new. As for the whol "nerd is the new emo" where have you been? That's been the case for ages - there are actually douches walking around my neck of the woods wearing glasses they don't need to, or wearing their hair Revenge of the Nerds style... it's been around for a bit :)
I also still don't think 60% of that ridiculous number of 360 subscribers is strictly MW or MW2
Posted 04:40pm 06/7/10
although i still find it funny when clocking 5 days with MW2 isn't nerdy but clocking 5 days world of warcraft (or equivalent) is completely nerdy.
Posted 04:42pm 06/7/10
Posted 04:45pm 06/7/10
Posted 05:17pm 06/7/10
Kotick, his board, and his investors, don't see that they've lost any real assets. They still have Infinity Ward, and the brands that Infinity Ward made, all they lost are some people who got uppity. Here's the kicker, Kotick doesn't think that the people are that essential to the mix. If someone gets uppity they can just hire new talent who'll be less uppity.
You know what? He's probably right. He's going to release MW3 and millions of deads**** will purchase it and make his investors f***tons of money. Nobody will give a s*** if some developers/designers from Infinity Ward got f***ed over, they'll be a good corporate citizen and consume.
Posted 05:25pm 06/7/10
Posted 05:37pm 06/7/10
Posted 05:58pm 06/7/10
Posted 06:02pm 06/7/10
Makes me glad I held on to my commodore 64. Looks like it's making a comeback fellas, watch out for my "how do I hook up my commodore 64 to the internet" thread in a few days.
Posted 07:54pm 06/7/10