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This is no doubt a no-news on the WoW end, but it is still an interesting situation where (Blizzard’s parent company) Activision Blizzard CEO Bob Kotick stars. Kotick passively threatened Sony that Activision would leave PS3 development if they do not lower the price on the console and development royalties. Say Whoa? That’s a daring threat from ... the man that leads the biggest Game Publisher in the world.
Kotick said: “I’m getting concerned about Sony; the PlayStation 3 is losing a bit of momentum and they don’t make it easy for me to support the platform. t’s expensive to develop for the console, and the Wii and the Xbox are just selling better. Games generate a better return on invested capital on the Xbox than on the PlayStation.”
Kotick provided threatened that Activision might drop off Sony PS3 and PSP ... by 2010-2011. Should Sony yield before the might of the Horde, I mean, Kotick?
Sony didn’t stay quiet though: “PlayStation has tremendous momentum coming out of E3, and we are seeing positive growth with more than 350 titles slated to hit across all our platforms, including many anticipated games from our publishing partners, We enjoy healthy business relationships with and greatly value our publishing partners and are working closely with them to deliver the best entertainment experience.”—said PlayStation spokesman Patrick Seybold.
Now that was a weak counterattack Sony. How many of those 350 titles are Activision’s? Sony completely ignored Kotick’s words to the point they didn’t even mention his name nor responded to the high costs to develop games for the PS3. Now here is the situation. Activision paid over USD $ 500 millions last year in royalties to Sony. Last year, Sony’s game division lost USD $ 597 millions—even with the $500 millions injected by Activision. If Activision had abandoned development on the PS3 last year—that would have been a bit over a whooping USD 1 Billion in losses for Sony. Could you imagine what the future for Sony would be if Kotick is not bluffing?
Personally, I doubt Kotick is bluffing. Sony should learn a thing or two about this man. Not only did he save Activision back in 1991 from ruin, he has Blizzard Entertainment under his umbrella, he dared to drop off the ESA and even from E3 last year. Blizzard has its own E3 dubbed Blizzcon—which sells 15,000 tickets in less than 20 minutes. Let’s just imagine Activision drops development on the PS3 and focuses exclusively to Xbox 360 and Wii development; and out of nowhere Blizzard drops the bomb ... Diablo III on Wii and Xbox 360. StarCraft II and World of Warcraft on Xbox 360—if keyboard-support became available on those consoles.
I could see Sony having a billion bucks in losses without Activision’s royalties, plus everyone would be buying Blizzard games on the competitor’s consoles. That my fellow readers is called pwnage. Never laugh at Kotick’s threats. He never bluffs.
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