Nightly Open Thread

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Activision has killed the Guitar Hero franchise. DJ Hero also got canned, but I don’t think anybody cares. Oh, and Activision is sacking about 500 people as well.

It seems to me we were talking about this a while back.

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8 Responses

  1. Sergorn says:
    February 10, 2011 at 7:53 am

    This is just crazy.

    Aren’t Guitar and DJ Hero supposed to be amongst the biggest success of these last years? And this ends like this ?

    Not I don’t care about these games, but the state of the gaming industry is worrysome.

    I mean in addition to this we basically have EA and Square – which are two of the biggest publishers around, and have both sold gazillion of games over the last year – having a crazy amount of financial loss.

    If we see big companies like this getting lot of loss in a year which brought multiple millions sellers. This just doesn’t bode well.

    • WtF Dragon says:
      February 10, 2011 at 12:18 pm

      Oh, by the way, your poet Eliot was wrong. This is the way these series end. (Sorry…dyed-in-the-wool “Cortana Letters” fan here.)

      That both companies lost money this year is actually…well, I mean, in some respects it makes sense. There was a massive global recession going on (it’s still going on in many parts of the world, and even the US is not free and clear of its effects), and there are almost always sales downturns during such times. People feel insecure in such times, and hold on to their dollars more jealously as a result.

      EA seems to be pulling through alright, especially in the mobile space (they made a fair bit of extra money there), and I would expect we’ll see them return to posting gains in 2012, if not 2011. Not as sure about Activision, but I guess they can always keep closing studios until they’re profitable with what’s left.

  2. Magnus says:
    February 10, 2011 at 2:23 pm

    Wasn’t there talk of putting up an IRC channel for us all here? Whatever came to that?

    We talked about it http://www.ultimaaiera.com/blog/would-an-ultima-irc-channel-be-of-use-to-you/ and then I Don’t think anything came of it.

    I am a chronic IRC idler, and would love to have some people with Ultima-tastes around. 😉

  3. Sanctimonia says:
    February 11, 2011 at 12:33 am

    I see Dominus checked in to the #aiera channel for a moment. Too bad I missed him. 🙁 He brought to light that I may have no nickserv running for nickname registration. As I mentioned, I don’t know dick about IRC sadly. I got the “original IRC daemon” ircd-irc2 running in Ubuntu 10.04, installed from the repositories. I think I need someone to tell me what the hell I’m doing, but at least it works in a barebones sense.

    As far as Activision news, that IS crazy. Why wouldn’t they have just sold the rights to someone else? Holding on to the IP for better times, I guess?

    I’m not surprised really, either. Big companies like to bet on the future and cruise around hand to mouth, so the idea of holding on to cash reserves in order to better weather hypothetical future storms is often not part of their game plan. They’d rather just fire hundreds of people to slow the flight of investors.

    In any case, maybe it will encourage more people to pick up an actual musical instrument and start flailing away. I remember doing exactly that with my cousin’s flute and could play a basic melody after about 30 minutes. Damn I hate those games…

    • WtF Dragon says:
      February 11, 2011 at 12:58 am

      I wasn’t really a fan of the “music games” genre either, but this is kind of a sad thing. Then again, well…I kind of always looked at stuff like Guitar Hero as being a fad more than an enduring genre. For a while, it was the go-to party game. But however many iterations later, it’s gotten stale, and its sales figures demonstrate that.

      For what it’s worth, Harmonix says Rock Band will keep rocking on. Anyone want to take the bet that they franchise will still be a money-maker by 2013?

  4. Sslaxx says:
    February 11, 2011 at 12:02 pm

    Having no real commercial competition might mean it won’t be a loss maker, at least…

  5. Sslaxx says:
    February 11, 2011 at 12:03 pm

    Oh, and I know one of the people canned by Activision. I think he can do better than working for Vivendi – he seems to be planning on going indie, so good luck to him.