Tech wrap: Modern Warfare 3 answers call to duty
Activision Blizzard’s “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3″ video game racked up more than $400 million in sales on its first day in stores in the U.S. and the UK, beating last year’s record of 5.6 million units, or $360 million in sales of “Call of Duty: Black Ops.” That game went on to sell $1 billion in less than two months.
Apple’s iOS 5.0.1 update did not address all of the battery issues troubling iPhone users, AllThingsD’s John Paczkowski writes. In a statement given to AllThingsD, Apple told the blog that “the recent iOS software update addressed many of the battery issues that some customers experienced on their iOS 5 devices…We continue to investigate a few remaining issues,” according to Paczkowski.
Regulators are investigating the safety of batteries used to power electric vehicles after a General Motors Chevrolet Volt caught fire following a routine crash test. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said that it has asked other manufacturers who make electric cars or who plan to do so for information on how they handle lithium-ion batteries. The request also includes recommendations for minimizing fire risk. NHTSA said it does not believe the Volt and other electric vehicles are at greater risk for fire than gasoline-powered engines.
Lenders will confront Olympus next week to demand an explanation for an accounting scandal engulfing the firm, a banking source said. Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda also weighed in, describing and calling for strict measures to preserve financial markets confidence. The disgraced maker of cameras and medical equipment risks being delisted from the stock market, and is being investigated by police and regulators, after it admitted this week to hiding investment losses for decades and using M&A payments to aid the cover-up.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 hits stores tonight
One of the biggest video game launches ever is going down tonight at stores all over the U.S. “Modern Warfare 3″, the eighth game in the “Call of Duty” series is going on sale at midnight While the usual suspects like GameStop and Best Buy will be open late to accommodate the crowds, Wal-Mart is going all out by hosting tournaments centered around the game at more than 2,700 stores starting at 8 p.m..
To give you some idea of how big the market for this game is, last year it took a little over two months for ”Call of Duty: Black Ops” to generate $1 billion in global sales.
In 2010, the last edition of the Activision military game sold more than 5.6 million copies, or $360 million worth units on its first day on sale. That is more than double Harry Potter’s record-breaking opening weekend box office take in June.
But how much will it make this year?
Sterne Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia said that he expects “Modern Warfare 3″ to outsell its predecessor by 10 percent and for 5.5 million to 6 million units on its first day. The game should sell 18 million units in the December quarter alone, he said.
Check out this article
http://2sandto.blogspot.com/2011/11/mode rn-warfare-3-vs-battlefield-3.html
Zynga herding its users like sheep from game to game: data
Social games company Zynga is adept at converting its current players to its new games, just as smoothly as some of the top video game franchises like Call of Duty, according to a new 21-page report by the game tracking service and social network Raptr.
The report takes into account more than 3 million Zynga players who use Raptr’s game tracking applications.
“If Zynga were to release a new game tomorrow, our data reveals that 90 percent of users of that new game will come from an old game,” said Dennis Fong, Raptr’s co-founder.
While 90 percent is such a high conversation rate any company might strive to that target, it also means that Zynga could cannibalize its users if it doesn’t find new players.
“A 90 percent average means that only 10 percent of its users are new,” Fong said. “Zynga has its pool of players, which is admittedly very large and they are basically just herding them around from game to game. Where is their growth going to come from? That’s a big question mark.”
The report is full of nuggets that could give potential investors in Zynga’s IPO a better picture of how people are playing social games. It shows that Zynga players play up to 8 sessions a day and that those sessions are 5 minutes long. Gamers are playing hardcore games on consoles and PCs like Call of Duty and World of Warcraft for longer periods of time, but for fewer sessions.
How Bobby Kotick ended up alongside Brad Pitt in “Moneyball”
How did Bobby Kotick, the CEO of the largest video game company in the United States, end up with a speaking role alongside Brad Pitt in the upcoming movie Moneyball?
In the baseball-meets-math flick based on the bestseller by Michael Lewis, Kotick plays a convincing owner of the Oakland Athletics, at least for the three seconds he is seen in the trailer (see clip above starting at 17 seconds).
When Brad Pitt, playing general manager Billy Beane, comes into his office asking him for a bigger budget to buy players, Kotick says, “we’re not in New York. Find players with the money we do have.”
Sounds a bit like the real-life Kotick who trimmed down Activision Blizzard – known for popular games like Black Ops — into a leaner organization focused on its top games.
Turns out Kotick is a friend of director Bennett Miller (who also directed Capote) and was trying to get him to direct a short film for his company’s non-profit, The Call Of Duty Endowment, which helps soldiers adapt to civilian careers after military service.
Kotick told Reuters this week:
“Modern Warfare 3″ vs “Battlefield 3″ fight turns ugly
The showdown between next fall’s biggest first-person shooters escalated at E3 this week, with EA’s and Activision Blizzard’s top brass exchanging some vitriol. Bobby Kotick, Activision Blizzard’s CEO first went on CNBC on Monday claiming that EA’s “Battlefield 3″ was just a PC title with only a ”small audience.” In response, EA’s CEO, John Riccitiello, told Reuters that Kotick was spreading misinformation about “Battlefield 3″ and that contrary to what Kotick said, it would be widely available on consoles.
Here’s what both CEOs told me:
BOBBY KOTICK, CEO, ACTIVISION BLIZZARD
“We just want to stay true to the interest of the Call of Duty fans and we try to not get distracted by what people are doing. I can’t objectively tell you what I think of other products until I see them. Battlefield I’ve only seen on a PC and nobody’s seen it on a console yet. Most of our consumers play games on a console. Until I see it on a console, I wouldn’t be objective on commenting on it.”
JOHN RICCITIELLO, CEO ELECTRONIC ARTS
“It’s the beginning of the war and (Kotick) recognizes they’re going to be threatened. We’re going to have a clash of the titans this fall. The very fact that he’s trying to cast doubt on our game is a perfect example of how we got his goat. In terms of where this goes, we think our PS3 game is better than their Xbox game and our PC game is better than their PC game. If that’s all he’s got to say, it’s obviously going to evaporate as we launch all three. If you went to our press conference, you saw the PS3 footage and the Xbox footage. If Bobby thinks that is PC footage, he’s in real trouble.”
Activision’s brainy toys take over
At E3, the huge video game trade show that kicks off in LA on Tuesday, the main attention usually falls on first-person shooter titles aimed at teens or young male gamers. Games targeted at children can easily get lost under the bright lights.
Activision Blizzard, known for “Call of Duty” and ”World of Warcraft” is trying to change this by backing its new kids game, “Skylanders” with a hefty marketing push at E3.
“It’s getting the full triple-A treatment,” said Laird Malamed, a senior vice president of development at Activision.
“I don’t rememeber a triple-A product launch of new intellectual property like this,” said Malamed, who added that he helped launch the first ”Call of Duty” game in 2003.
“Skylanders,” which is aimed at 6- to 10-year-olds, features action figures that come to life onscreen when you hook them up to consoles. A chip inside the figure stores its characters’ achievements and progress within the game. ”Skylanders,” which also goes by the nickname ”toys with brains” was written by Toy Story scribes Alek Sokolow and Joel Cohen.
While Activision first announced the game at New York’s toy fair in February, it revealed ahead of E3 that the same toys can be used with all consoles–Nintendo’s Wii, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Sony’s PlayStation3. If one child is playing the game at home on an Xbox, for example, he or she could bring the toy to a friend’s house and then load up the same character on a PlayStation– a move the company called a “first-ever cross-platform gameplay experience.”
Pretty good idea. http://stars.ign.com/objects/142/1421673 4.html The whole “pokemon” aspect of collection will probably be the bane of parents whose kids “gotta have ‘em all,” but this has some potential.
WoW! Blizzard Entertainment turns 20
Blizzard Entertainment, the publisher of World of Warcaft and StarCraft 2 (Korea’s national past time) turns 20 this year. In February 1991, three UCLA grads, Allen Adham, Frank Pearce, and Mike Morhaime founded a publishing company called Silicon & Synapse. Based in Irvine, California, it would later go on to be known as Blizzard Entertainment and crank out $1.65 billion in revenue 2010.
Here are some highlights of an interview on Monday with two of three founders, Pearce and Morhaime, as well as Activision Blizzard’s CFO Thomas Tippl. Here’s a video the company made to celebrate.
ON HOW FAST THEY CAN GET OUT THE NEXT WORLD OF WARCRAFT UPDATE (CATACLYSM TOOK TWO YEARS):
“We want to do it faster. Two years is too long and one year is too aggressive for us in terms of being able to deliver the quality of content.”-Frank Pearce, Blizzard’s co-founder and executive vice president of product development
ON EA’S UPCOMING STAR WARS MASSIVE MULTI-PLAYER GAME ‘THE OLD REPUBLIC’:
“There is room for more than one successful MMO in the Western world.”- Mike Morhaime, Blizzard CEO, co-founder
GlobalMedia-Ghosts of Atari haunt gaming sector dealmakers
The video game sector is often seen as being particularly ripe for consolidation, with some expecting old line media giants such as Time Warner to swoop in and scoop up a publisher to diversify their entertainment rosters.
But Strauss Zelnick, chairman of “Grand Theft Auto” publisher Take-Two Interactive, remains surprised by the lack of action on the consolidation front. “I think the legacy media companies have not been especially aggressive about interactive entertainment,” he said at the Reuters Global Media Summit in New York on Wednesday. His company, of course, fought off Electronic Arts’ hostile takeover bid in 2008.
“I have to admit there are times when I’m surprised they’re not more exposed.”
He said media world executives have long memories, which may explain in part their reluctance to buy a video game outfit. He said one name in particular, Atari, remains a cautionary tale. Warner Communications bought the iconic video game name in 1976 in what turned out to be a disastrous deal.
“The people who have run companies have all been around long enough to remember the Atari debacle that almost destroyed Warner Communications, and they just can’t get it out of their minds. Never mind that we’re not in the cartridge business anymore, never mind that was a licensed product, never mind that that it was badly managed situation. They just can’t forget that it almost tanked Warner Communications and actually changed the balance sheet of the company.”
That kind of skittishness isn’t warranted, he argued, maintaining the video game industry is “less volatile and less risky than their motion picture businesses.”
“If I were managing one of the old media business, heaven forbid, I would be integrating heavily into interactive entertainment because it’s a growth business.”
GlobalMedia-Gaming giants differ on mobile, social games
Much of the buzz in gaming these days revolves around two small but fast-growing areas: social games and mobile ones played on smartphones. But two titans of the video game industry have decidedly different takes on those markets.
There are already tens of thousands of game apps available for the iPhone and competing Android smartphones, and tens of millions of people playing free games on Facebook.
Still, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick (pictured) sounded less than enthusiastic about those markets when he spoke to the Reuters Global Media Summit in New York on Tuesday. And that represented a stark contrast from what Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello said just a day earlier
Kotick on apps: “We don’t view the App Store as a really big opportunity for dedicated games.”
On tablets: “I think it is a different device than a mobile device, but from a gaming perspective it is probably not a big opportunity for us just yet.”
On social: “I don’t think there is any question that people are playing Facebook games. The hours speak for themselves. But monetizing those hours is very different than just serving up free games… I think you will see a lot of investment there, continued investment there. But that is different. There is a different question, assessing it as a business opportunity. I think right now we don’t see an opportunity for us to participate in that market.”
Contrast that with the words of Riccitiello, who spent plenty of time in his summit appearance making the case that the future of gaming — the expansion of the customer base — would be fueled in part by mobile and social.
Activision’s Kotick: Game prices are OK; demand will come
Video game executives are some of the most optimistic you’ll ever meet. But you have to think they dream of the good old days (of only one year ago) when the industry was called “recession resistant”, thanks to the idea that “cocooning” consumers would, ad infinitum, plop down $60 for games.
Those days may be gone — just ask Nintendo. Now game makers are eyeing the holiday shopping season, with a lot on the line. Still, many are upbeat. Activision Blizzard Chief Executive Bobby Kotick, for one, says that at its core, the industry slowdown is about the wicked recession, not a shrinking appeal for games.
Reuters: Has the appetite for games dwindled? Kotick: I think the reason why the take-up rates over the last 6 or 7 months have been what they have been, as compared with where they were, has much more to do with macroeconomics than fatigue in the category. Once you are getting to that gift giving (season), my sense is that you are going to see a change in consumption.
One thing you won’t see this the holiday season: a drop in prices from the standard of $60 and up for top shelf games such as Activision’s highly anticipated “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2″ and “DJ Hero Renegade Edition” ($199). Kotick says that the price is right, given the rising cost of development, and the fact that that prices have been steady for a long time compared to that of other entertainment forms.
Reuters: Any chance for price movement? Kotick: Not that I’m aware of. If you look at the cost of development ten year ago to today and the cost of marketing, our ability to hold prices firm over ten years (is worth noting). If I told you that we had a 4x increase in 10 years in production expenses and even more than that in marketing and selling, we are still holding firm on those low price points.
Reuters: So prices could have been even higher? Kotick: Yes — (even) if you just added some inflation adjustment. We have tried to maintain no-price-increases and making sure that the products we are delivering are always the highest quality.
stock is falling now, hope it falls to below $9.5, then i’ll be buying, sales in 2010 will be amazing. SC2,wow:C,diablo3 all triple A titles pretty sure SC2 alone will cause a 200% increase.
i’m saving every penny to invest in atvi and i’m hoping that it will the best investment i ever made.
check out this take on Modern Warfare 3
here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0ShcdoFa aE