Bungie had no choice but Activision

By Fred Dutton Published 16 September, 2010

Big online element hinted for new project.

Bungie had no option but to sign with Activision, the publisher's CEO has suggested.

"When they started the process of looking for a new partner they had a vision for a kind of product they wanted to create that needed certain skills and capabilities," Bobby Kotick told an audience at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch's Media, Communications & Entertainment Conference in California.

"As they started looking at the obvious candidates they realised that no company other than Activision had the skills they needed to be successful for their vision for that product.

"These are things that you would never have envisioned five years ago," continued Kotick. "Blizzard has 2500 people in customer services just for World of Warcraft. How you train them, how you manage them, how you organise them, how you use CRM tools to be really effective in satisfying the expectations of your audience is something that no other company had.

"When Bungie started to think about their future product plan and realised how deficient they and everyone else was in providing all the services necessary to create great competitive products for the future, they didn't really have any other alternative."

Could all this talk of huge customer service requirements mean that Bungie has an MMO in its sights?

Bungie signed a 10-year multi-platform agreement with Activision in April. It has just started building its new gameplay engine following the launch of its final title for Microsoft Game Studios, Halo: Reach.

Picture of Fred.

About Fred Dutton

Fred Dutton is Eurogamer's US news editor, based in Washington DC.

Read more articles from Fred by visiting the Fred Dutton archive page.

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Comments (19) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Quint2020 #1 2 years ago

    Sorry Activision, I'm pretty well aware how futile and possibly immature my hatred is for you but I still do.

  • CaptainQuint #2 2 years ago

    Damn, my hopes of a plumbing simulator have just been dashed.

  • LazyDan #3 2 years ago

    The world is in dire need of a good and successful MMOFPS on a par with WoW. As much bandwagon-y hate there is out there for Halo and Activision, if I had to pick a developer/publisher combo who'd be able to pull it off, these two would be right up there.

    The dream team obviously being Ye Olde Blizzard and iD.

  • metalangel #4 2 years ago

    Imagine a fusion of Halo and Planetside...

  • Seoh #5 2 years ago

    @metalangel, you don't need to imagine, its already being made [link url=http://www.firefallthegame.com/
    ]http://www.firefallthegame.com/
    [/link]

    And its gonna be free to play and download.

  • Snixtor #6 2 years ago

    Bungie signed to Activision? Goodnight sweet prince...

  • schnide #7 2 years ago

    "Bungie had no choice but Activision.."

    ..because Kotick was holding their kitten ransom, with his pinkie to his mouth.

  • coolbritannia #8 2 years ago

    Seems a MMOFPS is definitely on the cards, persistent Borderlands anyone?

  • penhalion #9 2 years ago

    Given what happened to call of duty and others I think Bungie now seem to be on a PR face saving mission. They seem to be trying to convince both us and themselves that signing with activision was a good idea. I wonder if it's finally hit home that it wasn't?

  • Grom #10 2 years ago

    "we let them sign the contract with a pen made out of money"

  • coolbritannia #11 2 years ago

    Activision can't touch Bungie, this was all covered in the contract discussions from months ago. They might as well be a silent publishing partner.

  • Whitster #12 2 years ago

    They can't touch Bungie, but they can obviously do all their talking for them, and use poorly chosen worlds like deficent to describe them.

  • dingo75 #13 2 years ago

    What he bmitted:
    "They signed this contract with their own blood and it's made out of Human skin."
    Edited by dingo75 at 16/09/10 @ 11:36

  • IronCladChicken #14 2 years ago

    Sounds like Bungie needed Blizzard not Activision?
    I'm pretty sure WoW infrastucture was already setup bfore the merger?

  • ProGrasTiNation #15 2 years ago

    Two companies made for each other...they only care about releasing the same game over & over again with little to no changes

  • jrb #16 2 years ago

    so. we've got nobby nodick, and a bunch of fat cat w/bankers in the same room.... "no, my BS is stinkier than yours! hear the true awesomeness of when bungie signed to ActiBlizz!". The guys arrogance, and disdain for the people that put him where he is now beggars belief. I suggest a swift kick to the cunt may help.

    As for bungie, sadly they have no halo IP to take with them, what else do they have? marathon? lol
    going by nodick's comments bungie are obviously making an MMO. an FPSMMO based on halo would fail, even with jetpacks. Add blizzard's appalling customer service in to the mix and you've got one big failcake. Still, i look forward to having to pay more for pre-rendered cut-scenes than i do for game

  • Lee_Morris #17 2 years ago

    Again, whenever someone from Activision talks about the new Bungie game, they mention WoW as well. It's so obvious that the game is going to be an mmo of some kind.

    I wonder how Blizzard feel about this. You would think the game would launch about 2-3 years from now and you's think Blizzard's new mmo will be launching sometime in the next 3 years. Unless the Bungie mmo is targeted towards the consoles and not PC.
    Edited by Lee_Morris at 16/09/10 @ 20:53

  • davisorle #18 2 years ago

    Post deleted at 20:44:35 16-04-2012

  • Lee_Morris #19 2 years ago

    @davisorle

    I meant to say whenEVER someone from Activision talks about the game because I've heard them talked about together, by one of their execs, on 3 separate occasions.

    On and your wrong about ol' Bobby being a cunt....he's a cock head, mother fucker, duchehole cunt of a prick, to be exact ; )