Activision: 'We'd Need $1bn To Beat World Of Warcraft'

Friday 29th February 2008 - 11:00

CEO says the investment to topple top MMO is insurmountable, plus French website dates GT5 Prologue for March, and 360 hasn't peaked says MS

Activision CEO Bobby Kotick has admitted that the MMO market could be sewn up by World Of Warcraft. Speaking at an investor meeting he estimated that it would take up to $1bn, and even then success isn't guaranteed.

'We don't think that even if we made the $500m or $1bn investment to get a product out [to compete with WOW] that we would even be successful doing it,' he said, talking about why Activision merged with WoW owners Vivendi to make Activision Blizzard.

'When we first started looking at it, it appeared to us like a game in an insurmountable product category,' he continued. 'EA, Microsoft, Sony and scores of venture capital investments had been put to work unsuccessfully in trying to develop massively multiplayer games as a product opportunity.'

Then he started talking about business models and we lost interest, but it looks like WoW will be king of the MMO for a long while yet.

Meanwhile, in our To The Point News section, French website Game-Class claims PS3 Gran Turismo 5 Prologue bundle is coming on March 29 for EUR 399. Sony added, 'We are targeting an end of March release for GT5 Prologue - standalone, PlayStation Network and bundle.' Sounds like that's a date then.

Finally, Edge magazine have been asking Phil Spencer, the general manager of Microsoft Game Studios Europe, if the Xbox 360 has moved past it's prime now the Wii and PS3 are hitting their stride. Funnily enough, he thinks not.

'If you look at the third party portfolio for the 360 now, and its success on a worldwide basis relative to the PS3, it's obviously different to PS2 versus Xbox,' he pondered. 'You see those 'breadth' titles that third parties ship, be it the Lego series, the Pixar movie games, Guitar Hero or Rock Band, and they're all coming to our console.'

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