Former Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aimé has been on rather good terms with the team over at Xbox, and during a recent appearance at SXSW 2022 to discuss all things gaming and promote his new book 'Disrupting the Game', he was asked to share his thoughts the acquisitions currently taking place.
In terms of the purchase of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft, Reggie thinks it's a "fantastic purchase" by Phil Spencer and co. Here's what he had to say:
"The purchase of Activision by Microsoft, I think that was a great distress buy, the stock price had a lost a third with all of the cultural issues that the company has had, it was a fantastic purchase of King, mobile games, Call of Duty...just a fantastic purchase."
In saying this, Reggie had some words for Activision Blizzard - noting how "culture is set at the top" and how leadership forms this - with the CEO "setting the tone". As for whether or not Bobby Kotick should stay on, Reggie said that's up to Phil and Microsoft's CEO to decide:
"Look that's going to be a decision my good friends Phil Spencer and Satya [Nadella] make, that's not my call... but as an executive, I know that leaders set the culture and that [Activision Blizzard] was a bad culture, it's not just Activision...regrettably the gaming industry has had a number of these types of situations..."
What are your own thoughts about Microsoft snapping up Activision Blizzard and these companies potentially adopting the culture of other Xbox Game Studios? Tell us down below.
[source youtu.be]
Comments 11
It is the move that will ensure Xbox's success for many many years to come, and I am fully confident the Microsoft and Xbox leadership team will transform Activision into a far more pleasant company to work for. Hopefully they will fire Bobby as soon as possible, no doubt with a golden handshake to get rid of him, Phil and Reggie are an example of how to do it right and have morales for your staff, Bobby is the complete opposite and has been made very wealthy as a result.
No doubt the price was lower due to recent events. But the question is whether that distressed price was temporary or just ahead of time for of a company past it's peak. $70 billion still seems like an awful lot even including money printers King and COD.
"[Activision Blizzard] was a bad culture, it's not just Activision...regrettably the gaming industry has had a number of these types of situations..."
I wish we had more of this from big voices in the industry.
@themightyant the problem with Activision/Blizzard is that they had no strategy to move forward. Their biggest Cash Cow, CoD, became more and more important to hit that November release window and as no other game could compete financially, that forced Activision to move more and more studio's over to ensure that CoD would release on time.
Even without the other issues, they were putting all their eggs into one basket. Whilst they did try to release a few other games (Crash remake and 4, Spyro) these didn't sell enough to encourage Activision to make more games at the 'risk' of CoD missing its annual release window and if they get 'CoD' wrong, its a 'very' bad year for Activision. Its not just CoD 'game' sales, but all the MTX trade too has a major impact on their future and funding development towards future games.
Basically all their studio's are tied up with CoD so if CoD struggles, they don't have any other games in development to release and bring in revenue to offset the 'drop' in CoD sales and MTX sales...
Admittedly, when Kotick is taking a huge chunk of the income as a Salary, that doesn't help - but they got to a position where they can't make other games and risk CoD being delayed or seriously broken at launch and lose out on their biggest sales window
@BAMozzy That's true and Blizzard are also a shadow of their former selves having had a huge staff exodus over the last decade, a string of poorly received PR and delay after delay for their games. The last was Overwatch in 2016! Next one is Diablo "do you not have phones" Immortal, which is actually meant to be quite good and also coming to PC.
King seems to be in much better state with Candy Crush and Bubble Witch still printing money on mobile.
However as much as people talk about COD losing X number of players, or it being a bad year, they were still the #1 and #2 selling games of 2021 in the US and other territories weren't far behind. Vanguard and Black Ops Cold War. It's all relative.
@themightyant I know its 'relative' but in a sales driven business and where 'growth' is expected, declining profitability and sales is a massive concern.
Their shareholders expect growth, not decline and with increasing costs, you need to sell 'more and more' each year to show growth. Lack of growth affects share price and they don't have anything else to offset that decline. Its not just the sales though, if the game is losing players, then there are fewer people wanting to buy the latest season pass or MTX's, which then has a big knock-on to their annual income. It maybe not 'bad' sales wise, but that's the 'only' release and only income coming in until the next CoD, at least on Activisions side - and that's supporting all those studio's.
King may well be doing just as well as ever, but I doubt its 'growing' at a rate necessary to offset the decline of Activision/Blizzard income. As you say, Overwatch was 2016 and not as popular anymore (so lower income) and Vanguard is not as popular either so 'relative' to previous years, A/B is in a big decline with falling income and rising costs...
@BAMozzy Fully get that growth is THEIR aim and a concern to THEM. Just giving the balance for us, their measure of success is on a different scale.
Well spoken! Man love this guy, straight to the point. Reggie for president haha.
Sounds like he's saying it's great that the culture there was so bad that it allowed Microsoft to buy them
I'm reading this picturing his penultimate W3 sitting down with Skylanders figures and a very special partnership with Activision 😂
@Royalblues I hope they don't give Xbox priority. For a cross-platform/play game like Call of Duty. You don't want to be giving a platform one priority over the other.
" If there is parity between consoles, what was the point of going after these guys?"
To pad out GamesPass. Buying ActivationBlizzard guarantee that all future releases launch day 1 on the service. Plus ActivationBlizzard has a ton of dormant IP that would be great for GamePass.
Tap here to load 11 comments
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...