WOW could be around for a long time yet. Newer mmos coming out aren't even as good.
I think a lot of people who play WOW are ready for the next big thing, it just hasn't materialized yet...nor will it for quite some time in my opinion. The only thing that could change this is if Blizzard somehow missteps and screws up the game. Or if they release a better game...
True enough, WoW gameplay is pretty much unmatched, its not enough to just have good graphics, AoC proved that, WoW is still the most popular game, and i see nothing on the horizon to really challenge that popularity, you would think that the example set by Blizzard would encourage other developers to up their game, but, as recently demonstrated by cryptic, this is clearly not the case. Unless MMO developers really pull their finger out, i can't see anything changing in the next 5 years.
WOW could be around for a long time yet. Newer mmos coming out aren't even as good.
I think a lot of people who play WOW are ready for the next big thing, it just hasn't materialized yet...nor will it for quite some time in my opinion. The only thing that could change this is if Blizzard somehow missteps and screws up the game. Or if they release a better game...
True enough, WoW gameplay is pretty much unmatched, its not enough to just have good graphics, AoC proved that, WoW is still the most popular game, and i see nothing on the horizon to really challenge that popularity, you would think that the example set by Blizzard would encourage other developers to up their game, but, as recently demonstrated by cryptic, this is clearly not the case. Unless MMO developers really pull their finger out, i can't see anything changing in the next 5 years.
I highly disagree with you. WoW gameplay is everywhere, and has been ever since everquest.
Furthermore, plenty of next-gen mmo's are releasing this year and the next. I see plenty of change in the future, a quantum leap of dimensions if you will.
I doubt that this is anything more than a risk report that simply lists all thinkable and almost unthinkable causes for a decline in income on their products.
Wow is their major income product and they have listed many dangers, including server problems (not having enough servers), bandwith, loss of key personell, imporatance of keeping people happy with content upgrades and so on.
And when they say games such as wow.. they mean MMORPGS, they could not say games such as the unnanounced new mmorpg from blizzard. They just put wow name there to describe that there obviously is a danger of wow to someday loose lots of customers. Its a good thing that they worry and keep provinding wow with new content.
So obviously a risk report is just pointing out every danger there is.
I do however doubt that Activision and Kotick is a good match with Blizzard in the long run. The reason for Blizzards success is not just their awesome games. But the Blizzard name itself, and thats not because they have a fancy logo or a cool sounding name. its because they have years with Top quality games. Games that clearly is made with a sence of love and inspiration.
Activision might start to demand that Blizzard produces this and that and then things will fall apart. I hope that will never happen.
Blizzard have made few prodcuts. But they have been top in both gameplay and art style. And this is part of the legacy that have made Blizzard the top game producer. Its Quality > Quantity.
Everytime I read a Kotick interview when he talks about how Blizzard can help guitar hero I just think to myself that he just dont get it.
I am a huge fan of Blizzard and I buy all their games. And I to me Activision is nothing but a company that milks everything untill it bleeds and die. So I hope Blizzard and Vivendi who owns both activision and Blizzard will keep Koticks greedy hands away from Wow and Blizzards future games.
The best thing that could happen Blizzard was that Kotick found something else to do as his name is the oposite of Blizzard. Blizzard has a fantastic reputation amongst gamers and Kotick has the oposite.
Its not that iPhone games or Farmville are going to "take down" WOW. Activision is just awknowledging the fact that CASUAL gamers now have more options available to them, and will continue to have more options available to them in the future.
Things like "Words with Friends", "Paper Toss", "Mafia Wars" aren't going to burry World of Warcraft....thats not what they are concerned about. They are concerned about having subs drop to even the 5-8 million range........still by far the industry leader but a HUGE revenue loss to Activision.
The interesting part in all of this is that Activision / Blizzard only find themselves in competition with casual entertainment like iPhone apps & Social Networking Games because THEY THEMSELVES have expanded the traditional MMO market to bring in Casual Gamers.
Blizzard's vision to expand inclusion and make their MMO more casual friendly was one of the main reasons for their massive success over the last 5 years and it is the very thing that puts them in the position to loose significant revenue due to Farmville......very interesting.
WOW could be around for a long time yet. Newer mmos coming out aren't even as good.
I think a lot of people who play WOW are ready for the next big thing, it just hasn't materialized yet...nor will it for quite some time in my opinion. The only thing that could change this is if Blizzard somehow missteps and screws up the game. Or if they release a better game...
True enough, WoW gameplay is pretty much unmatched, its not enough to just have good graphics, AoC proved that, WoW is still the most popular game, and i see nothing on the horizon to really challenge that popularity, you would think that the example set by Blizzard would encourage other developers to up their game, but, as recently demonstrated by cryptic, this is clearly not the case. Unless MMO developers really pull their finger out, i can't see anything changing in the next 5 years.
I highly disagree with you. WoW gameplay is everywhere, and has been ever since everquest.
Furthermore, plenty of next-gen mmo's are releasing this year and the next. I see plenty of change in the future, a quantum leap of dimensions if you will.
I'd be very interested to know what games those are
WOW could be around for a long time yet. Newer mmos coming out aren't even as good.
I think a lot of people who play WOW are ready for the next big thing, it just hasn't materialized yet...nor will it for quite some time in my opinion. The only thing that could change this is if Blizzard somehow missteps and screws up the game. Or if they release a better game...
True enough, WoW gameplay is pretty much unmatched, its not enough to just have good graphics, AoC proved that, WoW is still the most popular game, and i see nothing on the horizon to really challenge that popularity, you would think that the example set by Blizzard would encourage other developers to up their game, but, as recently demonstrated by cryptic, this is clearly not the case. Unless MMO developers really pull their finger out, i can't see anything changing in the next 5 years.
I highly disagree with you. WoW gameplay is everywhere, and has been ever since everquest.
Furthermore, plenty of next-gen mmo's are releasing this year and the next. I see plenty of change in the future, a quantum leap of dimensions if you will.
I'd be very interested to know what games those are
Yea there are many games with the same play style that WoW has but WoW is the only one that perfected it. I would personally like to see different game play but from what I've seen not one game coming out comes close to anything new.
WOW could be around for a long time yet. Newer mmos coming out aren't even as good.
I think a lot of people who play WOW are ready for the next big thing, it just hasn't materialized yet...nor will it for quite some time in my opinion. The only thing that could change this is if Blizzard somehow missteps and screws up the game. Or if they release a better game...
True enough, WoW gameplay is pretty much unmatched, its not enough to just have good graphics, AoC proved that, WoW is still the most popular game, and i see nothing on the horizon to really challenge that popularity, you would think that the example set by Blizzard would encourage other developers to up their game, but, as recently demonstrated by cryptic, this is clearly not the case. Unless MMO developers really pull their finger out, i can't see anything changing in the next 5 years.
I highly disagree with you. WoW gameplay is everywhere, and has been ever since everquest.
Furthermore, plenty of next-gen mmo's are releasing this year and the next. I see plenty of change in the future, a quantum leap of dimensions if you will.
I would like to see the list of games that you might be referring to. 2009 was a huge let down in regards to ground breaking MMO's. I don't see anything other than SW:ToR that will possibly change that.
Read Robert Purchese's full analysis of the report over at Eurogamer. Do you think games such as Farmville or the rapidly growing popularity of casual games could actually be what topples the 800lb gorilla that is World of Warcraft? Let us know in the comments below!
Those statement are 'future proofing' their growth/revenue forecasts. They're basically saying 'tomorrow, someone could develop a full-sensory immersive virtual world and the hardware to run it and our products would be obsolete by breakfast the day after.'
Neural interfaces, quantum computing, or a breakthrough in an unexplore or 'undiscovered' technical field could obsolete the hardware we've been using for computing for years. Or, someone could just develop a real WoW killer and BOOM! WoW is dead. Activision gets to change their revenue forecasts, and everyone else was warned ahead of time.
I just sat here for about a half an hour skimming through that report looking for anything that compares WOW to games like farmville, and claims them to be competitors, I found nothing. If I missed it please point me to the section it was in.
I was actually worried for a second that companies focus on competing with games like that. If they did that would be a huge problem for us MMO gamers, and possibly explain why MMO's have been heading in the direction they have. However I found nothing in that report to support such an idea.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
What a lot of you fail to realize is that Blizzard and Activision are quite clearly separate entities. To take Activision's CEO Bobby Kotick's word over Blizzard's CEO Mike Morhaime and think it means anything. Kotick I'm sure would love to know the inner workings of the elephant in the room or to be able to tap into that pool of talent for his own side. But unless Vivendi's CEO Jean-Bernard Levy says so, Kotick can't dictate anything Morhaime does.
It's like saying that your brother can determine what you do when your ass is still living under your parent's roof. They are separate but under the same roof so to speak. Now if Morhaime said these things I could speculate that Blizzard's next MMO would be a social experiment to take advantage of the ever growing market of social gamers and their devices. As such one can conclude that phones would play a part in it for always wanting to keep people connected somehow and browsers would be the other part of it for availability for those phones and any PC or MAC on the planet.
Make it a F2P and you have yourself a game that can be played by all, at anytime, in short burst, free of anonymous users by keeping profiles linked to characters created and cheap for those who want it.
"Small minds talk about people, average minds talk about events, great minds talk about ideas."
What a lot of you fail to realize is that Blizzard and Activision are quite clearly separate entities. To take Activision's CEO Bobby Kotick's word over Blizzard's CEO Mike Morhaime and think it means anything. Kotick I'm sure would love to know the inner workings of the elephant in the room or to be able to tap into that pool of talent for his own side. But unless Vivendi's CEO Jean-Bernard Levy says so, Kotick can't dictate anything Morhaime does.
It's like saying that your brother can determine what you do when your ass is still living under your parent's roof. They are separate but under the same roof so to speak. Now if Morhaime said these things I could speculate that Blizzard's next MMO would be a social experiment to take advantage of the ever growing market of social gamers and their devices. As such one can conclude that phones would play a part in it for always wanting to keep people connected somehow and browsers would be the other part of it for availability for those phones and any PC or MAC on the planet.
Make it a F2P and you have yourself a game that can be played by all, at anytime, in short burst, free of anonymous users by keeping profiles linked to characters created and cheap for those who want it.
Hope that you are right. Kotick and Morhaime is like the good (Morhaime) and bad (obious..) of gaming.
I thought that it was the part of Vivendi that used to be Vivendi Games that basically overlook the studios that had been merged with Activision and become Activision Blizzard and that they had put Kotick on top.
So that before it was Vivendi games with lots of studios under.. and then their competitor activision with lots of studios under.
What a lot of you fail to realize is that Blizzard and Activision are quite clearly separate entities.
What you fail to realize is that they aren't.
Pulled from Blizzard's own site, mind you:
" Headquartered in Irvine, Calif., Blizzard Entertainment, a division of Activision Blizzard, was founded in 1991 under the name Silicon & Synapse by Allen Adham, President & CEO Michael Morhaime, and Executive Vice President Frank Pearce. "
Morhaime reports to Kotick in some way, shape, or form, as Kotick is the CEO of Activision-Blizzard. If big daddy Levy says Kotick can't touch Morhaime, that's one thing. Whatever is drawn up in terms of agreements for the Activision-Blizzard section of Viv is another.
That is exactly right, and we're not saying NO to save WoW, because it is already a lost cause. We are saying NO to dissuade the next group of greedy suits who decide to emulate Blizzard and Cryptic, etc. We can prevent some of the future games from spewing this crap, but the sooner we start saying no, the better the results will be. So - Stand up, pull up your pants, and walk away. - MMO_Doubter
Reading this thread just helped me finally realize how much I really just don't give a shit about WoW any more or what happens to it.
/snore
For all I care, Blizzard headquarters could fall off the earth tomorrow and all of their servers with them, and I wouldn't even bat an eye.
Do I hate WoW or Blizzard? No. I guess what I feel is worse than hate.....it's apathy. If I hated WoW and/or Blizzard, that would show, I suppose ...that I still feel SOMETHING. But when I read this thread....I realized that I don't feel a damn thing. I just simply couldn't care any less.
This should free up a lot of time wasted reading WoW threads on these boards. Hell...I might even have time to do last week's laundry.....
Every game becomes obsolete. WoW is no exception as all games have a life expectancy . The current style or format of MMO's is dead. Farmville though novel is a friends based MMO in every aspect. The difference is they select all there competition all the while weeding out the trash if you will. Simple, non mentally challenging *social* gaming. SOCIAL died in MMO's many years ago. SOCIAL is what keeps people playing. WAR signaled that it no longer existed in a modern day MMO.
Facebook has 100's of games so your not tied into a single gaming format. Wanna play poker ok, want to play pool or even fantasy based games? Ok we've got that. Their are millions of kill and grind gamers who like me wont waste another dime on any sort of MMO clone. I've killed more bears then McDonalds will ever sell burgers lol.. I have no interest in killing to level again just so i can PVP.
The current MMO format is no longer high in demand like it once was.
What a lot of you fail to realize is that Blizzard and Activision are quite clearly separate entities.
What you fail to realize is that they aren't.
Pulled from Blizzard's own site, mind you:
" Headquartered in Irvine, Calif., Blizzard Entertainment, a division of Activision Blizzard, was founded in 1991 under the name Silicon & Synapse by Allen Adham, President & CEO Michael Morhaime, and Executive Vice President Frank Pearce. "
Morhaime reports to Kotick in some way, shape, or form, as Kotick is the CEO of Activision-Blizzard. If big daddy Levy says Kotick can't touch Morhaime, that's one thing. Whatever is drawn up in terms of agreements for the Activision-Blizzard section of Viv is another.
Blizzard which was part of the Vivendi before Activision was even part of the picture is not ruled by Kotick. It may seem like that for all intent and purposes but they are singing their own tunes. It's like when my security company was released from a 4 year contract and a new company was taking over. My current site managers (the people paying the bills) asked if I would join the new security company and remain at their building. So I was "rehired" so to speak but remained at the same exact location. Everything that I accumulated during my time with "A" company switched over to "B" company and there is nothing "B" company can do or say to me as long as the site managers are holding the cards.
Now if this can happen for a security officer at a office building, what in the world makes you think anything has or will change at Blizzard when they have done their jobs to the fullest satisfaction of their "site managers"? AKA the real bosses Vivendi. Furthermore one look at the name, Activision Blizzard, will tell you that this is equal ground both CEOs are standing on. I'm sure Morhaime is just peachy running things at Blizzard and could care less about a PR spot as head CEO of a merged division with little to no creative control. Do you really think for a minute Kotick has the authority to fire Morhaime? Or Moraime has to go through the newly named CEO to talk to the people he's been working for since 1998? Yeah......keep believing that.
"Small minds talk about people, average minds talk about events, great minds talk about ideas."
Without a doubt the whole MMORPG market, not only WoW is falling on a hard time. The market has been saturated for quite a while. There were significant signs of the downturn since the emergence of social gaming. We have seen MMORPG with bigger budgets shutdown or pushed back indefinitely. We have seen developers/publishers testing water on different kinds of games to generate revenues.
I don’t think WoW will become obsolete any time soon though. I think Blizzard will go with the flow. Look for them to come up with social/causal gaming. Anybody for browser based WoW on Facebook or iPhone? Or a MMO social network joint venture with the king of the browser games Runescape?
*facepalm* God, can this genre really get any dumber? Yes... as if suddenly all the WOW gamers would play Iphone games or Farmville... humbug...
I kinda have to agree; though I wouldn't have said it in such a way =P. I more or less think this is a "Sky is falling!" type of scene. I don't think there's anything to worry about. And I like to think the MMORPG has room to evolve. If this is the direction MMORPGs will go, then we will learn to adapt, just as we learned to adapt when FFXI came out, and then EQ, and later; WoW.
~Miles "Tails" Prower out! Catch me if you can!
Come Join us at www.globalequestria.com - Meet other fans of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic!
*facepalm* God, can this genre really get any dumber? Yes... as if suddenly all the WOW gamers would play Iphone games or Farmville... humbug...
It is not “all of a sudden”. The downturn have been going on for more than 2 years. In these 2+ years the mmo community complained the lack of good mmo. What they didn’t realize or admit was the lack of good mmo was not caused by the “bad” companies. It was just the supposedly good ones were all cancelled or delayed for at least one year. Honestly anybody who has been playing mmo for years should know all those cancelling of Tubula Rasa, Mechscape and such and the postponement of SWTOR, GW2, D3 et al were not all due to bad management. Realistically, the whole mmo market was hurt by the social/causal sector since they emerged 2 years ago. The bigger budget mmo just got cancelled or postponed due to market condition.
And no, WoW gamers won't "all of a sudden" go to play iPhone games or Farmville. The MMO games will gradually move over to social/causal games. You have just seen a tip of the iceberg when you see Farmville or iPhone. There will be a lot more iPhone and Farmville on the horizen. In fact, after series of consolidations and evolutions in the MMO industry in the next 5 years I predict many of the current MMO leaders will come up as part of the next generation social gaming experience.
I am pretty sure that it is simply saying that if they stay stagnant and do not evolve in their quest for continued sales they will render themselves obsolete. I think it is a warning and cautionary tale to be ahead of the curve in the video game industry than 2 steps behind. Without change of course WoW would go under, and all other MMos that fail to adapt to the emerging markets. If you can roll with the punches there is nothing to fear however which I believe is what the report is about. If they feel they are falling behind in different aspects I believe that will change (Just look at their new app they are getting out for the iphone with the auction house). They are playing a little bit of catch up in the other medias but are still fairly well situated in the console market.
People I know who play social network crap like Mafia Wars would hardly think to play a console or pc game, much less an mmo. They are time-stuck on the NES days.(Not that I don't miss those days to some extent. When single player games could be played for many, many hours to days and were just plain FUN) As for Iphones...really?..people would rather play exclusively on those little ass screens instead of a 22" + monitor or huge hdtv? I can see this happening though...when you want big bucks and cater to the lowest common denominator just to draw in the masses...in most cases..you get shit. It may be that the console/pc single player and mmo games as we know them from the past..will become more niche than norm.
I don't even think the article talks about WoW. They seem to only use World of Warcraft as an example for all the non-casual games E.x. "Newer technological advances in online game software may also render products such as World of Warcraft obsolete." WoW has to be the most popular and most played game (Not counting franchises) in the history of gaming. I seriously doubt a few measly F2P Facebook Apps would even come close. The revenue gain each company makes isn't even close to what Blizzard gets in one month.
You would be suprised!
Mr. TAKAHASHI: 63.8 million monthly active users. Its the most popular thing you can do on Facebook now. - Talking about Farmville.
- Case: Thermaltake Kandalf Black Chassis - CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition 3.2GHz (OC'd 4.2GHz on Water Cooling) - Memory: Mushkin 8Gb (4x 2Gb) DDR3 1600Mhz - HDD: Dual Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB 7200 RPM - GFX: (2) XFX Radeon HD 5870 in CrossFire - New upgrade!
"I like wow, I like aion and I like AoC all for different reasons.....the later cause i get to see boobs, but still its a reason!!" - Sawlstone
*facepalm* God, can this genre really get any dumber? Yes... as if suddenly all the WOW gamers would play Iphone games or Farmville... humbug...
It is not “all of a sudden”. The downturn have been going on for more than 2 years. In these 2+ years the mmo community complained the lack of good mmo. What they didn’t realize or admit was the lack of good mmo was not caused by the “bad” companies. It was just the supposedly good ones were all cancelled or delayed for at least one year. Honestly anybody who has been playing mmo for years should know all those cancelling of Tubula Rasa, Mechscape and such and the postponement of SWTOR, GW2, D3 et al were not all due to bad management. Realistically, the whole mmo market was hurt by the social/causal sector since they emerged 2 years ago. The bigger budget mmo just got cancelled or postponed due to market condition.
And no, WoW gamers won't "all of a sudden" go to play iPhone games or Farmville. The MMO games will gradually move over to social/causal games. You have just seen a tip of the iceberg when you see Farmville or iPhone. There will be a lot more iPhone and Farmville on the horizen. In fact, after series of consolidations and evolutions in the MMO industry in the next 5 years I predict many of the current MMO leaders will come up as part of the next generation social gaming experience.
*sigh* Sometimes I wonder why we always have to repeat the obvious. No offense meant, but
a) most MMOs who were cancelt (sp?) were either bad or incomplete or simply bad designed. See TR. It wasnt really such a surprise
b) there are WAAAAY too many MMOs out there; today everyone and everyone's mom think they can make a MMO = over saturation
c) there just haven't been published a REALLY good new MMO for years!
d) the entire social aspect games like SWG, EQ, EQ2, UO asf had are totally neglected because a rush-rush design ideology took over and all is about fast to endgame and item greed treadmills now
Saying Facebook games are the solution for MMO gamers is like saying, oh look my kitchen is burning, LETS BURN DOWN THE WHOLE STATE, which is an improvement from merely the kitchen burning down! Those facebook games are 10000 times worse in all we always critizise. Is Farmville immersive? Or social? Or has vast worlds? Or has ANYTHING we critizised in any MMO in the last years BETTER?
Yes they will expand. So does McDonalds. Still I dont eat their food and still I prefer a good restaurant.
Target audiences... please, it is such a simple concept.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
What a lot of you fail to realize is that Blizzard and Activision are quite clearly separate entities.
What you fail to realize is that they aren't.
Pulled from Blizzard's own site, mind you:
" Headquartered in Irvine, Calif., Blizzard Entertainment, a division of Activision Blizzard, was founded in 1991 under the name Silicon & Synapse by Allen Adham, President & CEO Michael Morhaime, and Executive Vice President Frank Pearce. "
Morhaime reports to Kotick in some way, shape, or form, as Kotick is the CEO of Activision-Blizzard. If big daddy Levy says Kotick can't touch Morhaime, that's one thing. Whatever is drawn up in terms of agreements for the Activision-Blizzard section of Viv is another.
Blizzard which was part of the Vivendi before Activision was even part of the picture is not ruled by Kotick. It may seem like that for all intent and purposes but they are singing their own tunes. It's like when my security company was released from a 4 year contract and a new company was taking over. My current site managers (the people paying the bills) asked if I would join the new security company and remain at their building. So I was "rehired" so to speak but remained at the same exact location. Everything that I accumulated during my time with "A" company switched over to "B" company and there is nothing "B" company can do or say to me as long as the site managers are holding the cards.
Now if this can happen for a security officer at a office building, what in the world makes you think anything has or will change at Blizzard when they have done their jobs to the fullest satisfaction of their "site managers"? AKA the real bosses Vivendi. Furthermore one look at the name, Activision Blizzard, will tell you that this is equal ground both CEOs are standing on. I'm sure Morhaime is just peachy running things at Blizzard and could care less about a PR spot as head CEO of a merged division with little to no creative control. Do you really think for a minute Kotick has the authority to fire Morhaime? Or Moraime has to go through the newly named CEO to talk to the people he's been working for since 1998? Yeah......keep believing that.
Reading comprehension ftl. Highlighted area of concern.
Comparing your personal company to any other is in vain- all companies are structured differently. However, chain of command is something that exists in every company, organization, society...
There are always multiple pipelines that run through organizations. IT, legal, human resources etc. And any one individual might have a handful of bosses. Where lines tend to merge is higher in the corporate structure, where a more relaxed work environment is always cultivated in these industry giants.
We know from where we sit that Blizzard is one of Activision-Blizzard's few assets that the holding company doesn't completely control. So you nailed the independency portion of things. However, we do know that the one CEO sits higher on the corporate structure than another, and knowing chain of commands, we can safely conclude that somewhere, somehow, Morhaime hands some sort of report through Kotick, but never the inverse.
That is exactly right, and we're not saying NO to save WoW, because it is already a lost cause. We are saying NO to dissuade the next group of greedy suits who decide to emulate Blizzard and Cryptic, etc. We can prevent some of the future games from spewing this crap, but the sooner we start saying no, the better the results will be. So - Stand up, pull up your pants, and walk away. - MMO_Doubter
What a lot of you fail to realize is that Blizzard and Activision are quite clearly separate entities.
What you fail to realize is that they aren't.
Pulled from Blizzard's own site, mind you:
" Headquartered in Irvine, Calif., Blizzard Entertainment, a division of Activision Blizzard, was founded in 1991 under the name Silicon & Synapse by Allen Adham, President & CEO Michael Morhaime, and Executive Vice President Frank Pearce. "
Morhaime reports to Kotick in some way, shape, or form, as Kotick is the CEO of Activision-Blizzard. If big daddy Levy says Kotick can't touch Morhaime, that's one thing. Whatever is drawn up in terms of agreements for the Activision-Blizzard section of Viv is another.
Blizzard which was part of the Vivendi before Activision was even part of the picture is not ruled by Kotick. It may seem like that for all intent and purposes but they are singing their own tunes. It's like when my security company was released from a 4 year contract and a new company was taking over. My current site managers (the people paying the bills) asked if I would join the new security company and remain at their building. So I was "rehired" so to speak but remained at the same exact location. Everything that I accumulated during my time with "A" company switched over to "B" company and there is nothing "B" company can do or say to me as long as the site managers are holding the cards.
Now if this can happen for a security officer at a office building, what in the world makes you think anything has or will change at Blizzard when they have done their jobs to the fullest satisfaction of their "site managers"? AKA the real bosses Vivendi. Furthermore one look at the name, Activision Blizzard, will tell you that this is equal ground both CEOs are standing on. I'm sure Morhaime is just peachy running things at Blizzard and could care less about a PR spot as head CEO of a merged division with little to no creative control. Do you really think for a minute Kotick has the authority to fire Morhaime? Or Moraime has to go through the newly named CEO to talk to the people he's been working for since 1998? Yeah......keep believing that.
Reading comprehension ftl. Highlighted area of concern.
Comparing your personal company to any other is in vain- all companies are structured differently. However, chain of command is something that exists in every company, organization, society...
There are always multiple pipelines that run through organizations. IT, legal, human resources etc. And any one individual might have a handful of bosses. Where lines tend to merge is higher in the corporate structure, where a more relaxed work environment is always cultivated in these industry giants.
We know from where we sit that Blizzard is one of Activision-Blizzard's few assets that the holding company doesn't completely control. So you nailed the independency portion of things. However, we do know that the one CEO sits higher on the corporate structure than another, and knowing chain of commands, we can safely conclude that somewhere, somehow, Morhaime hands some sort of report through Kotick, but never the inverse.
Keep believing in those superficial gestures all you want. My main point is (and the point of this topic) that Kotick can say whatever he wants, but it does not reflect on Blizzard, nor does it hold any bearing on what direction they will take on their future developments. That call is for Morhaime to make, of course with the blessings of Viv.
Now Kotick's statements by far have more bearing on how things pan out with Activision. And that's because he seems to be talking more in terms of a publisher's viewpoint. You know, numbers, sales and untapped markets. His visions reach into the realm of profits, not creativity.
"Small minds talk about people, average minds talk about events, great minds talk about ideas."
Comments
True enough, WoW gameplay is pretty much unmatched, its not enough to just have good graphics, AoC proved that, WoW is still the most popular game, and i see nothing on the horizon to really challenge that popularity, you would think that the example set by Blizzard would encourage other developers to up their game, but, as recently demonstrated by cryptic, this is clearly not the case. Unless MMO developers really pull their finger out, i can't see anything changing in the next 5 years.
I highly disagree with you. WoW gameplay is everywhere, and has been ever since everquest.
Furthermore, plenty of next-gen mmo's are releasing this year and the next. I see plenty of change in the future, a quantum leap of dimensions if you will.
I doubt that this is anything more than a risk report that simply lists all thinkable and almost unthinkable causes for a decline in income on their products.
Wow is their major income product and they have listed many dangers, including server problems (not having enough servers), bandwith, loss of key personell, imporatance of keeping people happy with content upgrades and so on.
And when they say games such as wow.. they mean MMORPGS, they could not say games such as the unnanounced new mmorpg from blizzard. They just put wow name there to describe that there obviously is a danger of wow to someday loose lots of customers. Its a good thing that they worry and keep provinding wow with new content.
So obviously a risk report is just pointing out every danger there is.
I do however doubt that Activision and Kotick is a good match with Blizzard in the long run. The reason for Blizzards success is not just their awesome games. But the Blizzard name itself, and thats not because they have a fancy logo or a cool sounding name. its because they have years with Top quality games. Games that clearly is made with a sence of love and inspiration.
Activision might start to demand that Blizzard produces this and that and then things will fall apart. I hope that will never happen.
Blizzard have made few prodcuts. But they have been top in both gameplay and art style. And this is part of the legacy that have made Blizzard the top game producer. Its Quality > Quantity.
Everytime I read a Kotick interview when he talks about how Blizzard can help guitar hero I just think to myself that he just dont get it.
I am a huge fan of Blizzard and I buy all their games. And I to me Activision is nothing but a company that milks everything untill it bleeds and die. So I hope Blizzard and Vivendi who owns both activision and Blizzard will keep Koticks greedy hands away from Wow and Blizzards future games.
The best thing that could happen Blizzard was that Kotick found something else to do as his name is the oposite of Blizzard. Blizzard has a fantastic reputation amongst gamers and Kotick has the oposite.
Its not that iPhone games or Farmville are going to "take down" WOW. Activision is just awknowledging the fact that CASUAL gamers now have more options available to them, and will continue to have more options available to them in the future.
Things like "Words with Friends", "Paper Toss", "Mafia Wars" aren't going to burry World of Warcraft....thats not what they are concerned about. They are concerned about having subs drop to even the 5-8 million range........still by far the industry leader but a HUGE revenue loss to Activision.
The interesting part in all of this is that Activision / Blizzard only find themselves in competition with casual entertainment like iPhone apps & Social Networking Games because THEY THEMSELVES have expanded the traditional MMO market to bring in Casual Gamers.
Blizzard's vision to expand inclusion and make their MMO more casual friendly was one of the main reasons for their massive success over the last 5 years and it is the very thing that puts them in the position to loose significant revenue due to Farmville......very interesting.
True enough, WoW gameplay is pretty much unmatched, its not enough to just have good graphics, AoC proved that, WoW is still the most popular game, and i see nothing on the horizon to really challenge that popularity, you would think that the example set by Blizzard would encourage other developers to up their game, but, as recently demonstrated by cryptic, this is clearly not the case. Unless MMO developers really pull their finger out, i can't see anything changing in the next 5 years.
I highly disagree with you. WoW gameplay is everywhere, and has been ever since everquest.
Furthermore, plenty of next-gen mmo's are releasing this year and the next. I see plenty of change in the future, a quantum leap of dimensions if you will.
I'd be very interested to know what games those are
True enough, WoW gameplay is pretty much unmatched, its not enough to just have good graphics, AoC proved that, WoW is still the most popular game, and i see nothing on the horizon to really challenge that popularity, you would think that the example set by Blizzard would encourage other developers to up their game, but, as recently demonstrated by cryptic, this is clearly not the case. Unless MMO developers really pull their finger out, i can't see anything changing in the next 5 years.
I highly disagree with you. WoW gameplay is everywhere, and has been ever since everquest.
Furthermore, plenty of next-gen mmo's are releasing this year and the next. I see plenty of change in the future, a quantum leap of dimensions if you will.
I'd be very interested to know what games those are
Yea there are many games with the same play style that WoW has but WoW is the only one that perfected it. I would personally like to see different game play but from what I've seen not one game coming out comes close to anything new.
True enough, WoW gameplay is pretty much unmatched, its not enough to just have good graphics, AoC proved that, WoW is still the most popular game, and i see nothing on the horizon to really challenge that popularity, you would think that the example set by Blizzard would encourage other developers to up their game, but, as recently demonstrated by cryptic, this is clearly not the case. Unless MMO developers really pull their finger out, i can't see anything changing in the next 5 years.
I highly disagree with you. WoW gameplay is everywhere, and has been ever since everquest.
Furthermore, plenty of next-gen mmo's are releasing this year and the next. I see plenty of change in the future, a quantum leap of dimensions if you will.
I would like to see the list of games that you might be referring to. 2009 was a huge let down in regards to ground breaking MMO's. I don't see anything other than SW:ToR that will possibly change that.
Those statement are 'future proofing' their growth/revenue forecasts. They're basically saying 'tomorrow, someone could develop a full-sensory immersive virtual world and the hardware to run it and our products would be obsolete by breakfast the day after.'
Neural interfaces, quantum computing, or a breakthrough in an unexplore or 'undiscovered' technical field could obsolete the hardware we've been using for computing for years. Or, someone could just develop a real WoW killer and BOOM! WoW is dead. Activision gets to change their revenue forecasts, and everyone else was warned ahead of time.
I just sat here for about a half an hour skimming through that report looking for anything that compares WOW to games like farmville, and claims them to be competitors, I found nothing. If I missed it please point me to the section it was in.
I was actually worried for a second that companies focus on competing with games like that. If they did that would be a huge problem for us MMO gamers, and possibly explain why MMO's have been heading in the direction they have. However I found nothing in that report to support such an idea.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
What a lot of you fail to realize is that Blizzard and Activision are quite clearly separate entities. To take Activision's CEO Bobby Kotick's word over Blizzard's CEO Mike Morhaime and think it means anything. Kotick I'm sure would love to know the inner workings of the elephant in the room or to be able to tap into that pool of talent for his own side. But unless Vivendi's CEO Jean-Bernard Levy says so, Kotick can't dictate anything Morhaime does.
It's like saying that your brother can determine what you do when your ass is still living under your parent's roof. They are separate but under the same roof so to speak. Now if Morhaime said these things I could speculate that Blizzard's next MMO would be a social experiment to take advantage of the ever growing market of social gamers and their devices. As such one can conclude that phones would play a part in it for always wanting to keep people connected somehow and browsers would be the other part of it for availability for those phones and any PC or MAC on the planet.
Make it a F2P and you have yourself a game that can be played by all, at anytime, in short burst, free of anonymous users by keeping profiles linked to characters created and cheap for those who want it.
"Small minds talk about people, average minds talk about events, great minds talk about ideas."
Hope that you are right. Kotick and Morhaime is like the good (Morhaime) and bad (obious..) of gaming.
I thought that it was the part of Vivendi that used to be Vivendi Games that basically overlook the studios that had been merged with Activision and become Activision Blizzard and that they had put Kotick on top.
So that before it was Vivendi games with lots of studios under.. and then their competitor activision with lots of studios under.
What you fail to realize is that they aren't.
Pulled from Blizzard's own site, mind you:
" Headquartered in Irvine, Calif., Blizzard Entertainment, a division of Activision Blizzard, was founded in 1991 under the name Silicon & Synapse by Allen Adham, President & CEO Michael Morhaime, and Executive Vice President Frank Pearce. "
Morhaime reports to Kotick in some way, shape, or form, as Kotick is the CEO of Activision-Blizzard. If big daddy Levy says Kotick can't touch Morhaime, that's one thing. Whatever is drawn up in terms of agreements for the Activision-Blizzard section of Viv is another.
That is exactly right, and we're not saying NO to save WoW, because it is already a lost cause. We are saying NO to dissuade the next group of greedy suits who decide to emulate Blizzard and Cryptic, etc.
We can prevent some of the future games from spewing this crap, but the sooner we start saying no, the better the results will be.
So - Stand up, pull up your pants, and walk away.
- MMO_Doubter
Reading this thread just helped me finally realize how much I really just don't give a shit about WoW any more or what happens to it.
/snore
For all I care, Blizzard headquarters could fall off the earth tomorrow and all of their servers with them, and I wouldn't even bat an eye.
Do I hate WoW or Blizzard? No. I guess what I feel is worse than hate.....it's apathy. If I hated WoW and/or Blizzard, that would show, I suppose ...that I still feel SOMETHING. But when I read this thread....I realized that I don't feel a damn thing. I just simply couldn't care any less.
This should free up a lot of time wasted reading WoW threads on these boards. Hell...I might even have time to do last week's laundry.....
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
Every game becomes obsolete. WoW is no exception as all games have a life expectancy . The current style or format of MMO's is dead. Farmville though novel is a friends based MMO in every aspect. The difference is they select all there competition all the while weeding out the trash if you will. Simple, non mentally challenging *social* gaming. SOCIAL died in MMO's many years ago. SOCIAL is what keeps people playing. WAR signaled that it no longer existed in a modern day MMO.
Facebook has 100's of games so your not tied into a single gaming format. Wanna play poker ok, want to play pool or even fantasy based games? Ok we've got that. Their are millions of kill and grind gamers who like me wont waste another dime on any sort of MMO clone. I've killed more bears then McDonalds will ever sell burgers lol.. I have no interest in killing to level again just so i can PVP.
The current MMO format is no longer high in demand like it once was.
What you fail to realize is that they aren't.
Pulled from Blizzard's own site, mind you:
" Headquartered in Irvine, Calif., Blizzard Entertainment, a division of Activision Blizzard, was founded in 1991 under the name Silicon & Synapse by Allen Adham, President & CEO Michael Morhaime, and Executive Vice President Frank Pearce. "
Morhaime reports to Kotick in some way, shape, or form, as Kotick is the CEO of Activision-Blizzard. If big daddy Levy says Kotick can't touch Morhaime, that's one thing. Whatever is drawn up in terms of agreements for the Activision-Blizzard section of Viv is another.
Blizzard which was part of the Vivendi before Activision was even part of the picture is not ruled by Kotick. It may seem like that for all intent and purposes but they are singing their own tunes. It's like when my security company was released from a 4 year contract and a new company was taking over. My current site managers (the people paying the bills) asked if I would join the new security company and remain at their building. So I was "rehired" so to speak but remained at the same exact location. Everything that I accumulated during my time with "A" company switched over to "B" company and there is nothing "B" company can do or say to me as long as the site managers are holding the cards.
Now if this can happen for a security officer at a office building, what in the world makes you think anything has or will change at Blizzard when they have done their jobs to the fullest satisfaction of their "site managers"? AKA the real bosses Vivendi. Furthermore one look at the name, Activision Blizzard, will tell you that this is equal ground both CEOs are standing on. I'm sure Morhaime is just peachy running things at Blizzard and could care less about a PR spot as head CEO of a merged division with little to no creative control. Do you really think for a minute Kotick has the authority to fire Morhaime? Or Moraime has to go through the newly named CEO to talk to the people he's been working for since 1998? Yeah......keep believing that.
"Small minds talk about people, average minds talk about events, great minds talk about ideas."
Without a doubt the whole MMORPG market, not only WoW is falling on a hard time. The market has been saturated for quite a while. There were significant signs of the downturn since the emergence of social gaming. We have seen MMORPG with bigger budgets shutdown or pushed back indefinitely. We have seen developers/publishers testing water on different kinds of games to generate revenues.
I don’t think WoW will become obsolete any time soon though. I think Blizzard will go with the flow. Look for them to come up with social/causal gaming. Anybody for browser based WoW on Facebook or iPhone? Or a MMO social network joint venture with the king of the browser games Runescape?
*facepalm* God, can this genre really get any dumber? Yes... as if suddenly all the WOW gamers would play Iphone games or Farmville... humbug...
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
I kinda have to agree; though I wouldn't have said it in such a way =P. I more or less think this is a "Sky is falling!" type of scene. I don't think there's anything to worry about. And I like to think the MMORPG has room to evolve. If this is the direction MMORPGs will go, then we will learn to adapt, just as we learned to adapt when FFXI came out, and then EQ, and later; WoW.
~Miles "Tails" Prower out! Catch me if you can!
Come Join us at www.globalequestria.com - Meet other fans of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic!
It is not “all of a sudden”. The downturn have been going on for more than 2 years. In these 2+ years the mmo community complained the lack of good mmo. What they didn’t realize or admit was the lack of good mmo was not caused by the “bad” companies. It was just the supposedly good ones were all cancelled or delayed for at least one year. Honestly anybody who has been playing mmo for years should know all those cancelling of Tubula Rasa, Mechscape and such and the postponement of SWTOR, GW2, D3 et al were not all due to bad management. Realistically, the whole mmo market was hurt by the social/causal sector since they emerged 2 years ago. The bigger budget mmo just got cancelled or postponed due to market condition.
And no, WoW gamers won't "all of a sudden" go to play iPhone games or Farmville. The MMO games will gradually move over to social/causal games. You have just seen a tip of the iceberg when you see Farmville or iPhone. There will be a lot more iPhone and Farmville on the horizen. In fact, after series of consolidations and evolutions in the MMO industry in the next 5 years I predict many of the current MMO leaders will come up as part of the next generation social gaming experience.
I am pretty sure that it is simply saying that if they stay stagnant and do not evolve in their quest for continued sales they will render themselves obsolete. I think it is a warning and cautionary tale to be ahead of the curve in the video game industry than 2 steps behind. Without change of course WoW would go under, and all other MMos that fail to adapt to the emerging markets. If you can roll with the punches there is nothing to fear however which I believe is what the report is about. If they feel they are falling behind in different aspects I believe that will change (Just look at their new app they are getting out for the iphone with the auction house). They are playing a little bit of catch up in the other medias but are still fairly well situated in the console market.
People I know who play social network crap like Mafia Wars would hardly think to play a console or pc game, much less an mmo. They are time-stuck on the NES days.(Not that I don't miss those days to some extent. When single player games could be played for many, many hours to days and were just plain FUN) As for Iphones...really?..people would rather play exclusively on those little ass screens instead of a 22" + monitor or huge hdtv? I can see this happening though...when you want big bucks and cater to the lowest common denominator just to draw in the masses...in most cases..you get shit. It may be that the console/pc single player and mmo games as we know them from the past..will become more niche than norm.
You would be suprised!
Mr. TAKAHASHI: 63.8 million monthly active users. Its the most popular thing you can do on Facebook now. - Talking about Farmville.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120416321
Did a little more research and here is the most recent numbers:
FarmVille
Monthly Active Users: 83,224,849
DAILY Active Users: 30,753,126
Source: http://www.developeranalytics.com/app.php?id=102452128776
- Case: Thermaltake Kandalf Black Chassis
- CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition 3.2GHz (OC'd 4.2GHz on Water Cooling)
- Memory: Mushkin 8Gb (4x 2Gb) DDR3 1600Mhz
- HDD: Dual Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB 7200 RPM
- GFX: (2) XFX Radeon HD 5870 in CrossFire - New upgrade!
"I like wow, I like aion and I like AoC all for different reasons.....the later cause i get to see boobs, but still its a reason!!" - Sawlstone
It is not “all of a sudden”. The downturn have been going on for more than 2 years. In these 2+ years the mmo community complained the lack of good mmo. What they didn’t realize or admit was the lack of good mmo was not caused by the “bad” companies. It was just the supposedly good ones were all cancelled or delayed for at least one year. Honestly anybody who has been playing mmo for years should know all those cancelling of Tubula Rasa, Mechscape and such and the postponement of SWTOR, GW2, D3 et al were not all due to bad management. Realistically, the whole mmo market was hurt by the social/causal sector since they emerged 2 years ago. The bigger budget mmo just got cancelled or postponed due to market condition.
And no, WoW gamers won't "all of a sudden" go to play iPhone games or Farmville. The MMO games will gradually move over to social/causal games. You have just seen a tip of the iceberg when you see Farmville or iPhone. There will be a lot more iPhone and Farmville on the horizen. In fact, after series of consolidations and evolutions in the MMO industry in the next 5 years I predict many of the current MMO leaders will come up as part of the next generation social gaming experience.
*sigh* Sometimes I wonder why we always have to repeat the obvious. No offense meant, but
a) most MMOs who were cancelt (sp?) were either bad or incomplete or simply bad designed. See TR. It wasnt really such a surprise
b) there are WAAAAY too many MMOs out there; today everyone and everyone's mom think they can make a MMO = over saturation
c) there just haven't been published a REALLY good new MMO for years!
d) the entire social aspect games like SWG, EQ, EQ2, UO asf had are totally neglected because a rush-rush design ideology took over and all is about fast to endgame and item greed treadmills now
Saying Facebook games are the solution for MMO gamers is like saying, oh look my kitchen is burning, LETS BURN DOWN THE WHOLE STATE, which is an improvement from merely the kitchen burning down! Those facebook games are 10000 times worse in all we always critizise. Is Farmville immersive? Or social? Or has vast worlds? Or has ANYTHING we critizised in any MMO in the last years BETTER?
Yes they will expand. So does McDonalds. Still I dont eat their food and still I prefer a good restaurant.
Target audiences... please, it is such a simple concept.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
What you fail to realize is that they aren't.
Pulled from Blizzard's own site, mind you:
" Headquartered in Irvine, Calif., Blizzard Entertainment, a division of Activision Blizzard, was founded in 1991 under the name Silicon & Synapse by Allen Adham, President & CEO Michael Morhaime, and Executive Vice President Frank Pearce. "
Morhaime reports to Kotick in some way, shape, or form, as Kotick is the CEO of Activision-Blizzard. If big daddy Levy says Kotick can't touch Morhaime, that's one thing. Whatever is drawn up in terms of agreements for the Activision-Blizzard section of Viv is another.
Blizzard which was part of the Vivendi before Activision was even part of the picture is not ruled by Kotick. It may seem like that for all intent and purposes but they are singing their own tunes. It's like when my security company was released from a 4 year contract and a new company was taking over. My current site managers (the people paying the bills) asked if I would join the new security company and remain at their building. So I was "rehired" so to speak but remained at the same exact location. Everything that I accumulated during my time with "A" company switched over to "B" company and there is nothing "B" company can do or say to me as long as the site managers are holding the cards.
Now if this can happen for a security officer at a office building, what in the world makes you think anything has or will change at Blizzard when they have done their jobs to the fullest satisfaction of their "site managers"? AKA the real bosses Vivendi. Furthermore one look at the name, Activision Blizzard, will tell you that this is equal ground both CEOs are standing on. I'm sure Morhaime is just peachy running things at Blizzard and could care less about a PR spot as head CEO of a merged division with little to no creative control. Do you really think for a minute Kotick has the authority to fire Morhaime? Or Moraime has to go through the newly named CEO to talk to the people he's been working for since 1998? Yeah......keep believing that.
Reading comprehension ftl. Highlighted area of concern.
Comparing your personal company to any other is in vain- all companies are structured differently. However, chain of command is something that exists in every company, organization, society...
There are always multiple pipelines that run through organizations. IT, legal, human resources etc. And any one individual might have a handful of bosses. Where lines tend to merge is higher in the corporate structure, where a more relaxed work environment is always cultivated in these industry giants.
We know from where we sit that Blizzard is one of Activision-Blizzard's few assets that the holding company doesn't completely control. So you nailed the independency portion of things. However, we do know that the one CEO sits higher on the corporate structure than another, and knowing chain of commands, we can safely conclude that somewhere, somehow, Morhaime hands some sort of report through Kotick, but never the inverse.
That is exactly right, and we're not saying NO to save WoW, because it is already a lost cause. We are saying NO to dissuade the next group of greedy suits who decide to emulate Blizzard and Cryptic, etc.
We can prevent some of the future games from spewing this crap, but the sooner we start saying no, the better the results will be.
So - Stand up, pull up your pants, and walk away.
- MMO_Doubter
What you fail to realize is that they aren't.
Pulled from Blizzard's own site, mind you:
" Headquartered in Irvine, Calif., Blizzard Entertainment, a division of Activision Blizzard, was founded in 1991 under the name Silicon & Synapse by Allen Adham, President & CEO Michael Morhaime, and Executive Vice President Frank Pearce. "
Morhaime reports to Kotick in some way, shape, or form, as Kotick is the CEO of Activision-Blizzard. If big daddy Levy says Kotick can't touch Morhaime, that's one thing. Whatever is drawn up in terms of agreements for the Activision-Blizzard section of Viv is another.
Blizzard which was part of the Vivendi before Activision was even part of the picture is not ruled by Kotick. It may seem like that for all intent and purposes but they are singing their own tunes. It's like when my security company was released from a 4 year contract and a new company was taking over. My current site managers (the people paying the bills) asked if I would join the new security company and remain at their building. So I was "rehired" so to speak but remained at the same exact location. Everything that I accumulated during my time with "A" company switched over to "B" company and there is nothing "B" company can do or say to me as long as the site managers are holding the cards.
Now if this can happen for a security officer at a office building, what in the world makes you think anything has or will change at Blizzard when they have done their jobs to the fullest satisfaction of their "site managers"? AKA the real bosses Vivendi. Furthermore one look at the name, Activision Blizzard, will tell you that this is equal ground both CEOs are standing on. I'm sure Morhaime is just peachy running things at Blizzard and could care less about a PR spot as head CEO of a merged division with little to no creative control. Do you really think for a minute Kotick has the authority to fire Morhaime? Or Moraime has to go through the newly named CEO to talk to the people he's been working for since 1998? Yeah......keep believing that.
Reading comprehension ftl. Highlighted area of concern.
Comparing your personal company to any other is in vain- all companies are structured differently. However, chain of command is something that exists in every company, organization, society...
There are always multiple pipelines that run through organizations. IT, legal, human resources etc. And any one individual might have a handful of bosses. Where lines tend to merge is higher in the corporate structure, where a more relaxed work environment is always cultivated in these industry giants.
We know from where we sit that Blizzard is one of Activision-Blizzard's few assets that the holding company doesn't completely control. So you nailed the independency portion of things. However, we do know that the one CEO sits higher on the corporate structure than another, and knowing chain of commands, we can safely conclude that somewhere, somehow, Morhaime hands some sort of report through Kotick, but never the inverse.
Keep believing in those superficial gestures all you want. My main point is (and the point of this topic) that Kotick can say whatever he wants, but it does not reflect on Blizzard, nor does it hold any bearing on what direction they will take on their future developments. That call is for Morhaime to make, of course with the blessings of Viv.
Now Kotick's statements by far have more bearing on how things pan out with Activision. And that's because he seems to be talking more in terms of a publisher's viewpoint. You know, numbers, sales and untapped markets. His visions reach into the realm of profits, not creativity.
"Small minds talk about people, average minds talk about events, great minds talk about ideas."