[MyIS]Zips
09-20-2010, 05:16 PM
Activision CEO, Bobby "Nickel and Dime 'Em" Kotick, is at it again. This time he's taken to insulting every independent developer (http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=265559) in the world with the exception of Bungie.
That's right fans of Valve, Sucker Punch, Epic, Insomniac, and countless others, Kotick doesn't respect you.
Why is Bungie in his good graces? It might have something to do with the two companies having a new 10-year partnership that will see Activision publishing Bungie's next "action universe." This is widely believed to be a new MMO from the studio.
"Bungie are a very unusual company," Kotick told the America Merrill Lynch Media, Comms and Entertainment conference.
"They're probably the last remaining high quality independent developer. It's very hard to [pauses]... that has sort of has institutional skills and capabilities. And they're a real company.
"When they started the process of looking for a new partner, they'd been in business with Microsoft. They had a vision for a product they wanted to create that needed certain skills and capabilities - that Microsoft had some of.
"But as they started to go and look at the obvious candidates, they realised that no company other than Activision had the skills that they needed to be successful for the vision of that product. These are things that you never would have envisioned five years ago.
"Blizzard had 2,500 people in customer service and support just for World Of Warcraft. How you train them, how you manage them, how you organise them... how you use CRM tools in delighting and satisfying the expectations of your audiences.. it's something no other company [Bungie] talked to [could offer]."
You say classy there, Kotick. You stay classy.
That's right fans of Valve, Sucker Punch, Epic, Insomniac, and countless others, Kotick doesn't respect you.
Why is Bungie in his good graces? It might have something to do with the two companies having a new 10-year partnership that will see Activision publishing Bungie's next "action universe." This is widely believed to be a new MMO from the studio.
"Bungie are a very unusual company," Kotick told the America Merrill Lynch Media, Comms and Entertainment conference.
"They're probably the last remaining high quality independent developer. It's very hard to [pauses]... that has sort of has institutional skills and capabilities. And they're a real company.
"When they started the process of looking for a new partner, they'd been in business with Microsoft. They had a vision for a product they wanted to create that needed certain skills and capabilities - that Microsoft had some of.
"But as they started to go and look at the obvious candidates, they realised that no company other than Activision had the skills that they needed to be successful for the vision of that product. These are things that you never would have envisioned five years ago.
"Blizzard had 2,500 people in customer service and support just for World Of Warcraft. How you train them, how you manage them, how you organise them... how you use CRM tools in delighting and satisfying the expectations of your audiences.. it's something no other company [Bungie] talked to [could offer]."
You say classy there, Kotick. You stay classy.