In the future, people will not be able to construe skill at pushing buttons in the proper sequence with actual muscianship. Guitar Hero is done:
The reason? It's not making any money.
Unless someone sits on the disc, but yes, he's right. Activision has some popular titles - the latest version of "Call of Duty" made a billion dollars in six weeks. Think about that. Takes movies a while to make that much money, because ticket prices are lower, even even then the producers have to split the revenue with theaters. One billion in a month and a half. They didn't have to build sets. There's no temperamental star who holds up production because he had to go to rehab. They can do this year after year as long as the titles are good. They also make World of Warcraft, by the way. This is like owning the Star Wars and Star Trek franchise. AND they made Guitar Hero. Ready for the punchline?
They lost $223 million last quarter. That's better than the same quarter last year when they lost $286 million.
You'd think someone on the board of directors would wander on over to the CEO's office, sit down, have a friendly chat, and figure out where the money's going. Could be a fun little mystery to solve. "Okay, most of the stuff we make doesn't exist in the physical sense. It's all code. Sure, we have to pay the monkeys to write it, and we have to store it somewhere and have a backup - we do have a backup, right? Whew! - but since we don't actually have factories that turn out concert arenas, magical dungeons, or the entire friggin' country of Vietnam for that Call of Duty title, where is the money going?"
