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This seems like a inaccurate take from folks who are not following the gaming industry closely. Activision just had a record-setting year of high revenue (pres

This seems like a inaccurate take from folks who are not following the gaming industry closely. Activision just had a record-setting year of high revenue (presumably they are not feeling the impact of peaking attention), in part because the quality of their products is still high-ish. They laid people off because they could, not because of any downturn in business. EA's quarterly results are down, because their product quality has suffered and their pricing has risen, players are somewhat disengaging. Those problems are with EA and internal to EA, not problems with the industry. --- The article is right to claim that too much focus is on "Fortnite", but they miss their own point. These companies are not suffering from "peak attention", so much as they have stumbled into various mismanagement and/or bled out a chunk of their talent and ability to create. These companies problems are impacting the products they ship. If you build a well designed, well crafted product, players will still happily arrive and spend lots of money (as EA's own Apex Legends is showing today, and as Fortnite, Spider-Man, RDR2, Warframe, Path of Exile, Magic Arena, and many others routinely demonstrate.)

falcolas 8y ago
> EA's quarterly results are down, And yet they posted pre-tax profits of almost 1.5 billion dollars in 2018 (their highest profit numbers in the last 4 years). That's hardly the mark of a company that's ready to go under. Growth is not the only measure of a companies health.
- debacle 8y ago
  EA is really struggling with their Star Wars license. If they put out just 1 good Star Wars game they'd see insane revenue. I haven't purchased an AAA title in years and I would buy an okayish Jedi Knight IV.
  - grawprog 8y ago
    Just think of how many different colours of lightsabres would be available through microtransactions. I would have said grey area gambling but you did specify okayish.
  - CydeWeys 8y ago
    My dream is a modern Star Wars/TIE Fighter space shooter. Those were some of my very favorite games back in the late Win 3.1/early Win 95 era. I suspect it wouldn't have the same widespread appeal as an adventure/shooter/RPG like Jedi Knight, but it could be also be made at a pretty low cost, and it's not like the license restricts how many Star Wars games they can release. May as well go make a space shooter with a smaller team while they still have the license. Why does everything have to get the AAA treatment these days?
    - falcolas 8y ago
      > Why does everything have to get the AAA treatment these days? The same thing that causes companies who are making record profits to be considered underperforming: growth at any cost. For EA and Activision/Blizzard (and their big name kin), if a game doesn't have the potential to make significantly more money than its peers, it's not worth making.
      - DerDangDerDang 8y ago
        Which has the knock on effect that championing a smaller project through internal green light is not as good for your career as waiting for the chance to lead a AAA title- I’m guessing
    - verisimilidude 8y ago
      My dream is a modern Star Wars TIE Fighter space shooter...in VR. But I doubt the VR market is big enough to justify the investment that’s demanded by the Star Wars license. Like you say, AAA is sometimes a straight-jacket.
      - llukas 8y ago
        VR or non VR, refresh of X-Wing vs TIE Fighter with modern graphics would be epic...
      - dleslie 8y ago
        Elite Dangerous is as close as you'll get.
  - qmarchi 8y ago
    To follow up on it, EA isn't even terrible on having the studios make relatively great games. A quick look at the skyrocketing success of Apex: Legends, announced _at the EA call_ on Feb 5th, has already surpassed 25M accounts and 2M concurrent users. They need to focus on what's made them most of their money over the past years, game sales for series games (FIFA, NASCAR, etc.) and great first-party titles that aren't on a rushed release schedule. Apex is a great example of the latter. Nobody knew it was coming, and it ended up being a polished game that will probably make EA a significant portion of money. Disclaimer:? I play Apex, and legitimately enjoy it. I also play Anthem, which although not the _best_ game in the world, is still of pretty high production value from what I've played.
    - debacle 8y ago
      Apex is a great game. Throw in some force powers, lightsabres, and holocrons, and you suddenly have a great Star Wars game.
    - pnw_hazor 8y ago
      Though from what I read, EA allegedly had zero input into Apex. That might be why it is becoming popular. I just tried Apex a few days ago, it was pretty fun.
      - grogenaut 8y ago
        How much input did they have into Titanfall 1&2? Those weren't exactly gangbusters.
        pnw_hazor 8y ago
        EA gets a lot of the blame for TF 2's failure. "Of course, Titanfall 2’s disappointing sales aren’t as much to do with the nature of its content as much as it is about timing, and that’s entirely on EA. Sandwiching Titanfall 2 between Battlefield 1 and COD: Infinite Warfare hasn’t helped the game at all. Seriously, what were they thinking? Apparently, even the game’s producers were left in the dark behind the decision-making process." https://wegotthiscovered.com/gaming/poor-titanfall-2-sales-ea/ https://wegotthiscovered.com/gaming/poor-titanfall-2-sales-e... https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2018/01/31/eas-anthem-delay-could-save-bioware-from-the-sad-fate-of-titanfall-2/#73d674f97a5e https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2018/01/31/eas-anthem-...
  - falcolas 8y ago
    Disney's perfectly happy with EA's treatment of the Star Wars license, so what could be wrong? /s EDIT: Downvote away, but that is Disney's public stance on the topic.
Spooky23 8y ago
I don’t have a ton of direct insight into gaming, but in general when a business that’s dependent on development is facing headwinds and doubles down on hitting the numbers, that’s a bad sign. It’s often a signal that the firm is not investing in the business. IMO, modern business models for gaming (ie casinos for elementary school kids) are problematic and are turning kids off. There will be a harsh reckoning as more and more people figure that out.
- Macha 8y ago
  Or even accelerating the rate at which players age out of their target market. There's only so many games you can be subjected to the loot box marketing spree before you start turning away from major publishers all together. I like to sit down and enjoy my video games, not have carrots dangled to open my wallet after every chunk of gameplay.
  - majewsky 8y ago
    Amen. I just got a Switch and Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and it's really nice to just sit down and play, knowing that since I have already payed everything upfront, the next 100 hours of gameplay are mine to enjoy without any business transactions interrupting it.
- didibus 8y ago
  Wow, this is the first time I hear this argument, and it is a really good one. To enjoy and play games require some initiation to it as a kid. And the kind of games marketed at kids today I don't think do a good job at creating this interest. That could really hurt the industry long term.
- tokyodude 8y ago
  Confused about this response. The person it's responding to says Activision is doubling down on development by saving money in non-development. That's sounds like the opposite of "doubling down on hitting the numbers" and more like putting the money in the correct place, R&D, while saving it in others.
tokai 8y ago
>If you build a well designed, well crafted product Not a strong suit for triple-a developers.
- 0xcde4c3db 8y ago
  I'm not sure developers are really the problem. It seems like over the past 10-15 years the video game publishing industry has adopted Hollywood turd-polishing tactics (late review embargo dates, extremely frontloaded marketing blitzes with almost no useful/accurate information) to try to sell troubled productions as-is instead of overhauling them. Anthem absolutely reeks of this, for example.
  - hnick 8y ago
    Developers aren't the root cause but when you're making a AAA game the required team size alone pretty much means you're not going to have an all-star team of devs.
1123581321 8y ago
The best reporting on Activision I’ve seen has been from outside the games industry and games journalism (I’ve preferred writing from this link, Variety, Bloomberg, etc.) Activision is not concerned about whether they are making money now. They are concerned about whether they can continue to make money. They have profitable, mature lines but nothing in the battle royale genre that is quickly growing and a threat to both Call of Duty and Overwatch, not to mention what’s next after that. 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. The morality of layoffs can be debated, of course, but analysis of the reasoning has been too absent from close followers of the games industry.
- falcolas 8y ago
  > but nothing in the battle royale genre that is quickly growing and a threat to both Call of Duty and Overwatch This makes the assumption that if they make it, the market will obviously move to their product. The genre has a fairly fixed market, and taking away players from their previous investments (time and money) will take an exceptionally good game. Ironically, making good, interesting games is the one thing that Activision/Blizzard are/have been shifting their focus away from, ever since the iconic "I want to take the fun out of making video games" statement from their CEO.
  - dleslie 8y ago
    > I want to take the fun out of making video games Which is just insane. Part of the compensation for game developers is the love of their trade; without that, or undermining that, then it's just a low paying, high stress, and life wrecking tech job.
    - chii 8y ago
      Making a video game is not fun. Designing one is, but there's so much elbow grease needed to get a design to production that most people who want to make one don't ever complete. Companies like Activision wants to reduce the risks of failure (where failure means sales don't reach target). Therefore, they cannot trust experimentation (where all the fun in game making comes from). Anyone looking for this should instead turn indie!
PeterisP 8y ago
I mean, they aren't saying that players don't products, the point is that when "players will still happily arrive and spend lots of money" then (unlike earlier years) those players are leaving some other product (quite likely also made by one of the same few major publishers!) and spending less money there, so building that well-crafted product didn't bring new sales but cannibalized existing sales; and if the industry builds twice as much well-crafted products, the total revenue for the industry will be pretty much the same, with the only difference being that maybe one publisher will gain slightly more sales at the expense of another.

falcolas 8y ago

> EA's quarterly results are down, And yet they posted pre-tax profits of almost 1.5 billion dollars in 2018 (their highest profit numbers in the last 4 years). That's hardly the mark of a company that's ready to go under. Growth is not the only measure of a companies health.

debacle 8y ago
EA is really struggling with their Star Wars license. If they put out just 1 good Star Wars game they'd see insane revenue. I haven't purchased an AAA title in years and I would buy an okayish Jedi Knight IV.
- grawprog 8y ago
  Just think of how many different colours of lightsabres would be available through microtransactions. I would have said grey area gambling but you did specify okayish.
- CydeWeys 8y ago
  My dream is a modern Star Wars/TIE Fighter space shooter. Those were some of my very favorite games back in the late Win 3.1/early Win 95 era. I suspect it wouldn't have the same widespread appeal as an adventure/shooter/RPG like Jedi Knight, but it could be also be made at a pretty low cost, and it's not like the license restricts how many Star Wars games they can release. May as well go make a space shooter with a smaller team while they still have the license. Why does everything have to get the AAA treatment these days?
  - falcolas 8y ago
    > Why does everything have to get the AAA treatment these days? The same thing that causes companies who are making record profits to be considered underperforming: growth at any cost. For EA and Activision/Blizzard (and their big name kin), if a game doesn't have the potential to make significantly more money than its peers, it's not worth making.
    - DerDangDerDang 8y ago
      Which has the knock on effect that championing a smaller project through internal green light is not as good for your career as waiting for the chance to lead a AAA title- I’m guessing
  - verisimilidude 8y ago
    My dream is a modern Star Wars TIE Fighter space shooter...in VR. But I doubt the VR market is big enough to justify the investment that’s demanded by the Star Wars license. Like you say, AAA is sometimes a straight-jacket.
    - llukas 8y ago
      VR or non VR, refresh of X-Wing vs TIE Fighter with modern graphics would be epic...
    - dleslie 8y ago
      Elite Dangerous is as close as you'll get.
- qmarchi 8y ago
  To follow up on it, EA isn't even terrible on having the studios make relatively great games. A quick look at the skyrocketing success of Apex: Legends, announced _at the EA call_ on Feb 5th, has already surpassed 25M accounts and 2M concurrent users. They need to focus on what's made them most of their money over the past years, game sales for series games (FIFA, NASCAR, etc.) and great first-party titles that aren't on a rushed release schedule. Apex is a great example of the latter. Nobody knew it was coming, and it ended up being a polished game that will probably make EA a significant portion of money. Disclaimer:? I play Apex, and legitimately enjoy it. I also play Anthem, which although not the _best_ game in the world, is still of pretty high production value from what I've played.
  - debacle 8y ago
    Apex is a great game. Throw in some force powers, lightsabres, and holocrons, and you suddenly have a great Star Wars game.
  - pnw_hazor 8y ago
    Though from what I read, EA allegedly had zero input into Apex. That might be why it is becoming popular. I just tried Apex a few days ago, it was pretty fun.
    - grogenaut 8y ago
      How much input did they have into Titanfall 1&2? Those weren't exactly gangbusters.
      - pnw_hazor 8y ago
        EA gets a lot of the blame for TF 2's failure. "Of course, Titanfall 2’s disappointing sales aren’t as much to do with the nature of its content as much as it is about timing, and that’s entirely on EA. Sandwiching Titanfall 2 between Battlefield 1 and COD: Infinite Warfare hasn’t helped the game at all. Seriously, what were they thinking? Apparently, even the game’s producers were left in the dark behind the decision-making process." https://wegotthiscovered.com/gaming/poor-titanfall-2-sales-ea/ https://wegotthiscovered.com/gaming/poor-titanfall-2-sales-e... https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2018/01/31/eas-anthem-delay-could-save-bioware-from-the-sad-fate-of-titanfall-2/#73d674f97a5e https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2018/01/31/eas-anthem-...
- falcolas 8y ago
  Disney's perfectly happy with EA's treatment of the Star Wars license, so what could be wrong? /s EDIT: Downvote away, but that is Disney's public stance on the topic.

Spooky23 8y ago

I don’t have a ton of direct insight into gaming, but in general when a business that’s dependent on development is facing headwinds and doubles down on hitting the numbers, that’s a bad sign. It’s often a signal that the firm is not investing in the business. IMO, modern business models for gaming (ie casinos for elementary school kids) are problematic and are turning kids off. There will be a harsh reckoning as more and more people figure that out.

Macha 8y ago
Or even accelerating the rate at which players age out of their target market. There's only so many games you can be subjected to the loot box marketing spree before you start turning away from major publishers all together. I like to sit down and enjoy my video games, not have carrots dangled to open my wallet after every chunk of gameplay.
- majewsky 8y ago
  Amen. I just got a Switch and Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and it's really nice to just sit down and play, knowing that since I have already payed everything upfront, the next 100 hours of gameplay are mine to enjoy without any business transactions interrupting it.
didibus 8y ago
Wow, this is the first time I hear this argument, and it is a really good one. To enjoy and play games require some initiation to it as a kid. And the kind of games marketed at kids today I don't think do a good job at creating this interest. That could really hurt the industry long term.
tokyodude 8y ago
Confused about this response. The person it's responding to says Activision is doubling down on development by saving money in non-development. That's sounds like the opposite of "doubling down on hitting the numbers" and more like putting the money in the correct place, R&D, while saving it in others.

tokai 8y ago

>If you build a well designed, well crafted product Not a strong suit for triple-a developers.

0xcde4c3db 8y ago
I'm not sure developers are really the problem. It seems like over the past 10-15 years the video game publishing industry has adopted Hollywood turd-polishing tactics (late review embargo dates, extremely frontloaded marketing blitzes with almost no useful/accurate information) to try to sell troubled productions as-is instead of overhauling them. Anthem absolutely reeks of this, for example.
- hnick 8y ago
  Developers aren't the root cause but when you're making a AAA game the required team size alone pretty much means you're not going to have an all-star team of devs.

1123581321 8y ago

The best reporting on Activision I’ve seen has been from outside the games industry and games journalism (I’ve preferred writing from this link, Variety, Bloomberg, etc.) Activision is not concerned about whether they are making money now. They are concerned about whether they can continue to make money. They have profitable, mature lines but nothing in the battle royale genre that is quickly growing and a threat to both Call of Duty and Overwatch, not to mention what’s next after that. 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. The morality of layoffs can be debated, of course, but analysis of the reasoning has been too absent from close followers of the games industry.

falcolas 8y ago
> but nothing in the battle royale genre that is quickly growing and a threat to both Call of Duty and Overwatch This makes the assumption that if they make it, the market will obviously move to their product. The genre has a fairly fixed market, and taking away players from their previous investments (time and money) will take an exceptionally good game. Ironically, making good, interesting games is the one thing that Activision/Blizzard are/have been shifting their focus away from, ever since the iconic "I want to take the fun out of making video games" statement from their CEO.
- dleslie 8y ago
  > I want to take the fun out of making video games Which is just insane. Part of the compensation for game developers is the love of their trade; without that, or undermining that, then it's just a low paying, high stress, and life wrecking tech job.
  - chii 8y ago
    Making a video game is not fun. Designing one is, but there's so much elbow grease needed to get a design to production that most people who want to make one don't ever complete. Companies like Activision wants to reduce the risks of failure (where failure means sales don't reach target). Therefore, they cannot trust experimentation (where all the fun in game making comes from). Anyone looking for this should instead turn indie!

PeterisP 8y ago

I mean, they aren't saying that players don't products, the point is that when "players will still happily arrive and spend lots of money" then (unlike earlier years) those players are leaving some other product (quite likely also made by one of the same few major publishers!) and spending less money there, so building that well-crafted product didn't bring new sales but cannibalized existing sales; and if the industry builds twice as much well-crafted products, the total revenue for the industry will be pretty much the same, with the only difference being that maybe one publisher will gain slightly more sales at the expense of another.