[maxsilver]

> but nothing in the battle royale genre that is quickly growing and a threat to both Call of Duty and Overwatch

That's not really how games work though. Games are mainly emotional purchases of mass-produced art, not commodities like Corn or Oil. Games are not fungible like this. Telling Activision "you must make a battle royale game because Fortnite" is a quick way to watch them burn a lot of money on something that likely won't be very successful.

It's like saying, "Hey Warner Brothers. Disney just made a bunch of money making this 'Frozen' film, so you need to also make a movie about Magical Sisters in some sort of Medieval European Ice Palace". Technically, they can execute on this, but the result is unlikely to be successful.

> They need to invest heavily in acquisitions and development of new titles using their existing brands. The layoffs came from areas of the company that wouldn’t be able to help with that.

With all due respect, I believe Activision needs to do the exact opposite of the above.

They need to invest in their existing successful titles (WoW, Overwatch, Diablo, Hearthstone), all of which have growth opportunity Activision has ignored in various amounts. And Activision needs to constantly be developing new brands with innovative new games behind them to experiment with. This is a sustainable approach to business in an industry where the market demands can shift wildly literally overnight.

Trying to acquire their way out of this, and recycle their old brands year-over-year into quick products, is how their product quality dropped in the first place. It's not a healthy way to handle the market, it's not a sustainable way to grow their business, and it's why they constantly worry about "whether they can continue to make money".

[dragontamer]

> It's like saying, "Hey Warner Brothers. Disney just made a bunch of money making this 'Frozen' film, so you need to also make a movie about Magical Sisters in some sort of Medieval European Ice Palace". Technically, they can execute on this, but the result is unlikely to be successful.

Maybe a more apt example is "Hey WB, Marvel just made a huge amount of money making a 'Shared Superhero Movie Universe'. You should do that too".

Although I guess WB is finally starting to make good movies in Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and maybe Shazam?

----------------

In any case, I agree with you. Battle Royale games are clearly the hot new thing at the moment, but Hearthstone (Blizzard / Activision) basically created the online collectable card game (yeah: MtG is the original game, but it never had a good and/or profitable video-game version before Hearthstone).

The goal of these game companies should be to discover the NEXT big game genre. Battle Royale is big today, but it will be years before you can launch a new Battle Royale game on the same quality as Fortnite.

New Genres pop up all the time: MOBA (League, DOTA, HOTS), MMORPG (WoW, Guild Wars, Final Fantasy, Eve), and now Battle Royale. Who knows? Maybe the next major genre will be robot-cars with rockets on them that play soccer. (Rocket League, except no clones have been made yet!! Think about it...)

[xemdetia]

I feel that the structural components of these large gaming publishers are actively working against them creating an environment to discover any new thing, let alone a new game genre. For instance I just do not believe that these large companies have the logistical bandwidth/incentive to not chase a 100MM hit, and these larger publishers have clearly learned from the post-MMO, post-Kickstarter, F2P/DLC landscape. It was quite a few years ago when I heard the anecdote that all new proposals should have a DLC/loot box hook for projects, and it just makes so much sense. Valve and others trailblazed the concept that you could convince people to part with their money for a chance of getting something of perceived value. Everything they have been doing is to create ecosystems of engagement to create those long relationship/impulse opportunities. To me, this is optimizing for the fact that most consumers in the market seem to have less free money for the traditional model that they are used to, but are willing to leak out a few dollars here and there en masse. From the platform side the console churn/complexity that was there in the 90's is lessened, slowed, and standardized.

The organizations themselves feel like they can't handle 100 1MM projects compared to a single 100MM project just from leadership and management but that's not something I blame wholly on these companies, it's a structural thing in most public companies right now. From a simple analysis it is so much less risky for them to just acquire a new development firm with a sure thing/hit that can be shoved down their sales funnel. You gain the best parts of the corpse too: the employees, the IP, the proven product, and the future and recurring sales. Sure they'll lose the employees, but the rest of it will carry weight until the IP is forgotten. Even right now the IP for both EA/Activision is probably still worth a ton if they had to part it out.

In a more theory kind of sense I just feel like this is one of the problems with how public companies work right now. Once you are of a certain size and exist primarily in the B2C space, the mindset becomes optimize, reduce costs, and make GAAP profits. While I feel like historically this may have been a healthy transition from companies at (today's dollars) 50MM-150MM AR to take them to 500MM+ AR it doesn't translate as well when a 100MM revenue increase is the only way to even move the needle when the majority of the company's revenue steals the attention.

[1123581321]

I agree with all that (I try not to think about how we’ll never get a lovingly made, non-F2P Warcraft IV.) I just think that even if their growth strategy is bad or callous, it’s still a strategy and the restructuring/layoffs aren’t only to cut costs.

[alexgmcm]

They are releasing Warcraft 3 remastered - maybe if it does really well they would do a Warcraft 4...