Activision "might stop supporting Sony" Comments by Games Industry.biz

"So what would be a good attach rate for the xbox to be doing well?

Last i read they were at 8.1 games per console. If this is a bad number then like i said, what IN YOUR OPINION would be good?"

Don't have a clue why you bring up attach rate as I sure as hell didn't.

Good or bad performance has nothing to do with OPINION but with cold, hard cash. PS3 and 360 both cost billions to develop and neither has grown fast and big enough to recoup the initial investment.

I fully support Activision when it comes to putting pressure on Sony. They are about to launch big games with one of them supposedly receiving the “biggest entertainment launch of all time” so of course they would want Sony to do as much as possible to increase the number of PlayStation 3 consoles sold. They are a business and wish to be as successful as can be and with Sony having talked the talk but not actually having walked the walk, it's hard seeing your team win the game when a team player is being more than incompetent.

Furthermore, I myself may easily be able to afford a PlayStation 3 but I just don't see a point at that price and have been patiently waiting for a price drop for months now. Any help in achieving that price drop is appreciated. Keep it up, Activision.

hexagon: you seem to forget - like a lot do - that worldwide sales of ps3 are faster than these of 360, but I am repeating myself...

The historical fact is that the price-cuts last year provided a major stimulus to 360 sales world-wide. By the same logic PS3 should see a similar boost following a price-cut. Utterly disregarding any "system warrior" BS, everyone knows that the single biggest factor limiting PS3 sales is its entry-cost. Its the most expensive hardware on the market, and regardless of Sony's "value proposition" spin that is a big problem. A price-cut would be desirable for everyone - however what is clear is that Sony have been unable to do this so far without "cutting their own throats" in terms of loss per unit of hardware sold.

Even assuming the reports of the PS3 Slim are true, and that it will facilitate the much needed price drop, Sony still need to clear retail and distribution channels of old hardware at the current price point before announcing the new SKU. Their hands are tied basically.

For these reason's Kotick's comment strikes me as empty sabre-rattling. There's hardly an issue of threat when the "problem" is one that is known about, and is doubtless in the process of being addressed. The question is then, why did he make this threat as all it stands to do is make Sony look weak?

My second point answers this. Sony as a platform holder has a very significant stable of first-and-second party developers. In many respects they are directly competing against Activision on their own platform. Releasing Infamous directly before Activision's big new IP Prototype most likely didn't sit too well with Bobby. Its not a matter of which title is "better", its very clear that they are targeting a similar market. By pushing Infamous out first (and Sony did bring the release of Sucker Punch's game up, purely for this reason) they stole a lot of Prototype's thunder.

I suspect this is simply a bit of spite on Kotick's part after seeing the sales figures for Prototype on PS3. A not-so-friendly reminder to Sony that if they fuck with him, he'll take his ball and go home.

I'd also add that I suspect Ghostbusters somehow fits into this equation also. Activision made a ton of money off of the license back in the 80's, and looking at Activision's track record they put a lot of stock in past successes (Crash and Spyro spring to mind). It makes me wonder if the real reason Ghostbusters was dropped was Sony's (via Columbia pictures) refusal to allow them to milk the franchise annually.

@ MeBrains

I believe it is more relevant that at this point in time, Sony has sold a significantly lesser amount of consoles than Microsoft and Nintendo. In addition to that, it is harder to develop games for the PlayStation 3 than for the Xbox 360 and the Wii, ergo, it costs more to develop games on the PlayStation 3. Why? Sony made the PS3 difficult to develop for on purpose. It definitely isn't that hard to see where Kotick is coming from.

Can i ask you, what is the point in someone going out and investing in a PS3 over a 360?

Can I ask you why you care so much about what other people like to spend their money on?

"Can i ask you, what is the point in someone going out and investing in a PS3 over a 360? "

Better hardware, better exclusives, free online, Blu-Ray.

That's 4 points.

Reliability is almost irrelevant. I blew into endless MegaDrive cartridges, played my PlayStation upside down during the last years of its life and opened up my Dreamcast every month to clean those bastard metal prongs. Price too. It cost me a fortune paying per-minute to play Phantasy Star Online and I emptied my wallet to buy an original Xbox on launch day. But I wanted to play Halo.

Capture the imagination of the public, and something will sell. Just like Wii Fit. People just don't care about Blu-ray in the same way they did about DVDs. And they don't care about the PS3 in the same way they did about the original PlayStation. Somebody earlier in the thread labelled these people as 'fickle'. But at one point, it was Sony who caught the imagination of the public, driving people away from SEGA and Nintendo. That's just how things go.

This is an entertainment industry. It's supposed to be about enjoyment. People aren't going to wait for 'the year of the PlayStation 3' to enjoy themselves, when they can waggle their way through 2009 or unlock achievements on Live. I'm sure Sony will work hard to claw its fans back though, right? And I can't wait to see what they come up with. I just hope it's something more exciting than potential and a 10 year console cycle.

"Should the console actually have been better engineered, I (personally) might be tempted. As it is, I refuse to give my money to a company which knowingly puts defective hardware on the market and sells it for a premium price. 3y warranty?! - my ass."

lol - Sony's hardware track record over the last decade is sparkling clean, though! :D

Will their battery make my PC blow up today or will the PS2 stop reading discs? I can never tell!

"Better hardware, better exclusives, free online, Blu-Ray.

That's 4 points."

Region-freeness is a fifth.

"everyone knows that the single biggest factor limiting PS3 sales is its entry-cost"

I dont know, me and 22.73 million other PS3 owners may disagree (Thanks Wikipedia).

For an overpriced/no gamed bit of black stuff it seems to be going okay.

I believe the suggested loss of Activision would not put to much of a dent into what Sony are after. Christ have you seen all
the 1st party stuff coming out in the coming 6-12 months and even the past 6-8 months. I don't want to do lists but there has been plenty of great stuff on disk and from PSN.
Not just your generic FPS but things that really get my gaming blood flowing. different things that really stand out.
If Acti things they are onto a loser with the PS3 then hey I doubt Sony would really lose that much sleep.

This guy just sounds like he wants to force Sony's hand a little and perhaps he think he might come out of it the other end some kind of hero.

Sony will drop the price but no because this twit thinks they should. But hey, again 22.73 million people didn't mind the price.

;-)
kj

PS3 isnt the best selling console, but with a bigger install base then dreamcast or gamecube had. Didnt companies want to develop for them? Sure, games are more expensive to develop today, but still 20+ million PS3 units isnt that bad and could turn a nice profit. Lowering the price of a new PS3 would sell a couple of more units and put Sony in a tough spot where they have to make it up somewhere else.
Remember when the first Xbox was released and MS went on about having the lowest license and still had to back out from their promise, otherwise the loss would be even larger. The same with Sony, they could reduce the PS3 base unit price but in the other end it could lead to higher royalties for the publishers and even higher pricepoints for the small guitars and other peripherals to make up for the loss.

@ronuds: no company's hardware track record is sparkling clean. All things break. That is just a given.

imHo though, there is a mighty difference between a failure rate of 0.001% (or however low was it for the batteries?) and - depending on reports - up to 60% in 360's case, don't you tend to agree?

btw kj, vgchartz's numbers tend to be quite reliable: http://vgchartz.com/hwlaunch.php?cons1=W... ; they're updated weekly, and corrected monthly.

To all people saying who cares about activision games? the answer is PS3 owners care more about multi platform activision games than exclusive games. The numbers speak loud and clear, more ps3 owners bought call of duty 4 than uncharted and killzone 2 combined.

"btw kj, vgchartz's numbers tend to be quite reliable: http://vgchartz.com/hwlaunch.php?cons1=W... ; they're updated weekly, and corrected monthly."

There you go. Who needs a price cut. Its doing just fine.

Anyway who really wants a price cut. This just means all the Chavz's, Slags & 12 year olds will get hold of one and it will turn into Live overnight with annoying abusive idiots shouting into my ear...

"Since when do gamers have an allegiance to these corporate f*ckhead demons?"

You have clearly missed something over the last couple of years.

This leads on to the one thing that has amused me the most over the last few years. One massive corporation brought console gaming to the masses in the last 15 years and is now being crucified by certain people and one corporation has released several pieces of software that will be used by the masses that aren't fit for public consumption/usage. One is viewed as being TEH EPIC PWNAGE FAIL and the other sells 30m consoles and is viewed as the greatest victory mankind has seen since, well, ever.

The only other comparison I can relate to it is BMW vs Mercs*, yet you never see BMW drivers call Merc driver a stupid c***(which you can see on EG on a daily basis) for buying a different car but here you do for someone buying a console from one massive company instead of a console from another massive company.

*My comparison is based on the general opinion that BMWs are usually seen as being the better driving car but they still just aren't as good as Mercs.

I certainly wouldn't want MS to come out on top as much as Sony have been; just look how arrogant it made them :/

Competition is healthy.

Hi guys read this every day but first post. Here are my thoughts on this argument. First, I would like to say that although I currently own an Xbox 360, I would never say that I am a fanboy for one system or another.

I have been a gamer since first owning a commodore 64 - and no im not very old 25. After that it was the mega drive and then the playstation 1.

So I have been a fan of the playstion since it first arrived here and have very much enjoyed sonys first party games.

After the playstation, I supported both the ps2 and later the xbox.

I would say that sonys output and strategy seem to have changed alot since the ps2. From my point of view, the ps1 was about innovative games first and also about have a range of games that appealed across the whole gaming demographic.

This continued to a great extent with the ps2. I must say though that as someone that enjoys the FPS genre, I could never get into it on the PS2, I felt that the controller really was not designed for these sorts of games and hence bought an xbox for this purpose.

The xbox itself was a great colsole for the 'hardcore' gamer but it missed a trick by not really appealing to the broad audience that the PS2 did and also by coming late to the party. Sony really were the first company to really push themselves towards the casual market while still keeping its core audience happy.

What happened next though was a bit of a disaster.

Sony as a company got into a massive war over Blu-Ray Vs HD DVD. It appears to me that because of the massive install base of the PS2, that Sony decided to put a Blu-Ray player in every PS3 in an effort to simply win the war. This indeed worked. However, in doing this, it appears that Sony were not really thinking about games much at this stage and more about winning a movie based war - something which would be very profitable for them.

As a result, we got the Blu-Ray player, a piece of kit that was very expensive to produce and therefore Sony had to have a relatively retail cost for its PS3. I think their thoughts were that people who were going into the next gen for movies would buy one over a dedicated player as the PS3 was cheaper or at least the same price as a player. Sound reasoning - but only assuming that people were infact looking to move into this new era of HD Movies. I think they also did not take into account that the general public would still maybe rather not buy a console over just a player.

Of course Microsoft are no angels in this, they released a console which was full of design flaws just so they could get a head start over Sony.

However, Microsoft do know their audience very well. They know what owners of the Xbox want/wanted. They have a very very good and reliable online service as well. But microsoft have trouble getting the casual audience to buy their consoles as people assume that it is a gamers machine. Sony on the other hand also have trouble as Nintendo have stolen a large part of their PS2 audience which would maybe have moved to PS3 if it werent for the wii.

With high development costs, coming late to the party and no longer appearing to chase their traditional core audience sony are struggling. They are no longer significantly catering to the casual market and they only have a handful of exclusives.

I would love to be playing MGS and Drakes Fortune. But as it stands, it is not a justifyable cost to buy a console just to play a few exclusive titles.

I also much prefer the controller on the Xbox for FPS and so naturally buy Xbox.

But i do think it is silly really to be a fanboy for one big company or another. To me, it is just a piece of hardware for me to play games on that I want to play. The Xbox is a lot cheaper here and also the games are more expensive on PS3 so it is a no brainer for me. Also, as has been said already, Blu-Ray uptake here is fairly slow, I am a massive film buff and watch movies almost as much as I play games. Saying that, I have no desire to upgrade to Blu-Ray just yet, I would have to replace dozens of DVDs and also pay a premium to do so. I am not alone on this, the average customer would find it hard to do so as well.

So for me the PS3, although a much more realiable piece of hardware is just too expensive to justify the cost of buying one over an Xbox. If I can play pretty much the same games on either piece of kit, why wouldnt I want to do it as cheap as possible. Also bear in mind that Sony, unfortunately, have managed to lose quite a few of their exclusives.

And that is why I think Sony are losing this generation and struggling with up-take rates of their hardware and software. The hardware is too expensive in relation to every other console on the market, the software is more expensive than every other console on the market. Also, as a consumer, if you want to play a certain game you can usually get it on the cheaper console anyway. Most consumers dont read these websites, they dont even know that most games texhnically run slightly better on the Xbox. All they care about is how much do the games cost and how much is the hardware to play these games on. Imagine for instance parents buying their teenagers a new console for Christmas, and we wonder why the PS3 does not sell more units?

"the software is more expensive than every other console on the market."

?! Is that true? Get all my PS3 games via import and thus am able to take advantage from the weak dollar and GBP. I've never been able to get games this cheap before TBH. But then again, as I don't own a 360 (unless you really crave some exclusives, there's little point in owning both HD consoles IMO) , I've never really investigated its game prices.

The software is exactly the same price across the board. In a few cases, the PS3 version has actually been cheaper (usually only by about £2).

@kj66246

I said limiting sales, not stopping them!

Surely you aren't going to argue that were Sony able to sell PS3 at 100$ less than its current price they would be more competitive with MS and Nintendo's offerings?

This is not to say that the PS3 is overpriced as such (if Sony are still making a loss on each unit sold you can't reasonably cry foul), just that its cost is prohibitive to a large chunk of its potential market.

Personally, I like my PS3 more than my 360. But, I have to say that -like a lot of people- I bought a 360 first because it seemed like a better deal at the time.

God, such childish rhetoric throughout.

It's just a transparent attempt to hold Sony to ransom. It'll probably work eventually but Sony will claim Activision had nothing to do with it (which may or may not be true).

F*ck Activision AND Sony.

Videogames being made by lawyers and demons. We should boycott the lot.

Did you know: Many lawyers play, enjoy and respect videogames! It's shocking, I know!

HOLD on lads... let us see HOW this will actually turns out! I had said this is purely posturing but if its do get serious which I doubt, then it would have a far fetching consquences if at least the message is that Sony is not that important (any more) to all games publisher business if nothing else.

Sony may be damned either way and there could be no easy decision as they would not want to cave in and instead consider a more graceful way of keeping publishers onside BUT public still steaming ahead and that there is nothing wrong and just a normal posturings.

We ll know that presently PS3 is still firmly in a 3rd place and third party games sales need to pick up abit more, the same can be said for Nintendo as their first party games are doing far far better than third parties publishers. MS is not exactly where they would want to be but they are pretty chuffed what they managed to do so far.

At the end, the market is pretty much more level playing field and that is bad? Not for us consumers as better competition means we would tend to see a better quality in products and better prices.

I SECOND THAT CHOCADOODLEPOO factimus maximus(the real one) is a valued commenter of this site and should be treated as such

/facepalm

A new low has been reached.

It's the case with fans who "stop supporting" sony until the console price drops, because its too expensive for them, and there are other consoles at a cheaper price. This appears to be the situation for a game developer like Activision also. Fans and developers, support is being lost over the high price of the box. It was a mis-calculation, but an understandable one as Sony were kings last generation. But as they say, you are only king for a day.

Even if this particular threat turns out to be hollow, it is still the case that support has been lost and many once loyal Sony developers have done, and are now reluctantly dipping their toes in the multi-platform pool.

"Better hardware, better exclusives, free online, Blu-Ray.

That's 4 points."

1. Not any more.
2. That's down to taste but considering every major PS3 exclusive hasn't reviewed very well I'd be inclined to say "wrong"
3. You get what you pay for.
4. You can buy a 360 and a standalone BD player for about the same price as a PS3. Not a selling point any more.

"the software is more expensive than every other console on the market."

?! Is that true? Get all my PS3 games via import and thus am able to take advantage from the weak dollar and GBP. I've never been able to get games this cheap before TBH. But then again, as I don't own a 360 (unless you really crave some exclusives, there's little point in owning both HD consoles IMO) , I've never really investigated its game prices.

@Les

But do the majority of gamers want to go through the trouble of importing games, Les?
Most people just want to go to the shop and buy a game :)

Damn, do I hate that Prototype ad!

2. That's down to taste but considering every major PS3 exclusive hasn't reviewed very well I'd be inclined to say "wrong"

Why are you spewing forth complete and utter bollocks?

http://www.metacritic.com/games/platform...

http://www.metacritic.com/games/platform...

http://www.metacritic.com/games/platform...

http://www.metacritic.com/games/platform...

http://www.metacritic.com/games/platform...

http://www.metacritic.com/games/platform...

http://www.metacritic.com/games/platform...

http://www.metacritic.com/games/platform...

http://www.metacritic.com/games/platform...

http://www.metacritic.com/games/platform...

http://www.metacritic.com/games/platform...

http://www.metacritic.com/games/platform...

Yes, I went to all that effort just for you.

Piracy! Piracy! Piracy!

First they blame all their losses on piracy, now they have a system fully pirate-free,
and what do they do? They say they don't want to support it.

So, it turns out that piracy never was such a big problem.

"Can i ask you, what is the point in someone going out and investing in a PS3 over a 360?"

Well, I have a gaming PC that outstrips the xbox 360 easily, and more of the xbox titles overlap with the PC, so it made sense to go with the ps3.

Plus it works fab as a blu ray player/media hub in my living room.

/shrug

if the xbox pulls out something to justify owning it and a gaming PC, I'd prob buy one too.

maybe sony should say you don't have to pay us royalties, but you can't make any 360 games. That would be hilarious, we would all be able to watch farticus tell us that MW2 is rubbish, and no-one ever bought any of the call of duty series.

Its very simple. The massive royalties they are paying Sony are not getting covered by the amount of titles sold. They are not making enough money. So why should they keep on giving them $400 million if the figures dont add up? Although Sony are not going to reduce the cost of the console because Activision want them to, and why should they. Maybe they should have looked at renegotiating the royalty payments instead of crying to the Times about their issues with Sony.

@Les

For those that don't get it: The number of games each console owner buys isn't dependent on the price of the console. A price drop won't make me as someone that already owns the console all of a sudden buy more games.

That's not what he's saying so I guess it's you that doesn't "get it".

As time goes on, more and more of the gaming hardcore will already have bought a PS3 as by definition, the early adaptors buy earlier into the technology cycle. As time goes on you rely more and more on "casual" purchasers who will buy not because they're fanboys who dream about the hardware, but because the price is right and they fancy "a gaming console" or "a blu-ray player". These people are more price-sensitive - they didn't rush out and buy the hardware on day #1 irrespective of the price for example - and are less likely to drop another few hundred on games at the same time as making the initial hardware purchase.

So to conclude, yes, for any given price the average attach rate is likely to fall as time goes on. Of course, the rules are changed when the price drops and more people decide to take the plunge and buy some games at the same time, due to the fact that the initial purchase is costing less.

Ooh, did I miss the train?

Anyway, for the remaining stragglers, here's my opinion, for what it's worth (probably nothing :) ):

Looks like Bobby Kotick was trying to strong-arm Sony into either lowering the PS3 prices or decrease the licensing costs.

On the other hand, I really can't understand some PS3 supporters being so supportive of the PS3 price tag. Sure, for me, it was an investment well worth it (even though I bought the more expensive US 60 GB launch model), but for others it might be a tad too much and all that is stopping them from getting it. I know a few folks like that. And I really think (and I think most people other than the most hardcore PS3 fanboys would agree) a PS3 price drop, maybe by $100, would really get the ball rolling.

Maybe it will happen in late August or September when the rumored PS3 slim comes out?