Activision Fires Infinity Ward Heads, Talks About Future Call of Duty Games

The big news that has swarmed all over the net lately is that there’s been a feud of sorts between Activision and Infinity Ward, the developers of Modern Warfare 2, and most other Call of Duty games.

Reportedly the President, Jason West, and CEO Vince Zampella, of the studio have been fired for "breaches of contract and insubordination”. Security guards escorted people out of the office too. The LinkedIn and Facebook pages of both guys confirms the rumours, and have left IW. Some rumours suggest that it was due to IW not being paid royalties from Activision.

Steve Pearce and Steve Ackrich are the new interim heads at the company.

The infamous Bobby Kotick of Activision has apparently also held a meeting or two with the remaining staff. People all over are not only attacking Activision, but reckon that the situation is far from resolved.

But the development of Call of Duty games goes on, as there will be two expansions or DLC packs for Modern Warfare 2, set for release this year, a Treyarch developed game supposedly set in Vietnam, and now another Call of Duty game said to be an action-adventure game, developed by Sledgehammer games, formed by the heads of Visceral Games (developers of Dead Space), Glen Schofield and Michael Condrey. And that still leaves another Call of Duty game probably coming next year, which must be Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, by IW, if things settle down within the company.

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Source: G4tv

Activision Fires Infinity Ward Heads, Talks About Future Call of Duty Games

Moron of the Moment: Bobby Kotick

The first time I did something like this was when I posted about Yoshiyuko Tomino, who claims that games are evil.

Now I move on to the man I really wanted to debut in this series. He is truly evil according to some, having earned some demonic nicknames over the past few months. He is the Dark Lord of evil Publisher Activion: Bobby Kotick.

Both Bobby Psykotick and Activision have gotten on the wrong side of gamers and celebs lately. Here are a few reasons why he’s won this award, Moron of the Moment:

• He’s bragged about how much he earns ($ 15 million last year).
• He’s detailed how to rip gamers off by making them buy more for just one game.
• He has said he would raise the prices of video games higher if he could (as if they’re not expensive as it is).
• He has claimed to know what gamers want by saying that we only want more and more sequels and not new IPs.
• He has brazenly stated that he wants to take the fun out of making video games.
• Activision threatened to stop supporting Sony consoles.
• He has also said that he might stop supporting consoles as a whole as he wants gamers to play through TV without console support.
• He has revealed his plans for world domination- at least as far as video games triumphing over other media goes.
• He’s only in the business for the money and nothing else, except perhaps spreading his evil influence.

Quotes from Bobby Kotick:

“people are happy with existing franchises, provided you innovate within them.”

"We have a real culture of thrift. The goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks into Activision about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games."

“In the last cycle of videogames you spent $50 on a game, played it and took it back to the shop for credit,” he told attendees. “Today, we’ll you a $100. You might add a microphone or drums, you might buy two or three expansions packs, different types of music. Over the life of your ownership you’ll probably buy around 25 additional song packs in digital downloads. So, what used to be a $50 sale is a $500 sale today."

“And the best of all margins – the 25 percent operating margin business – has the potential as we can see with World of Warcraft to be a 50 percent operating margin business. What used to be a low 20s return on invested capital business is now growing to a plus 40 percent return on invested capital business.”

"We are very good at keeping people focused on the deep depression."

“I view the medium as having the potential to eclipse film and television,”

"the company is not interested in games that "don't have the potential to be exploited every year on every platform with clear sequel potential and have the potential to become $100 million franchises"

"I try to promote an atmosphere of skepticism, pessimism, and fear in my company."

Activision recently got on the bad side of Courtney Love, former Nirvana band-mates, and fans, by using Kurt Cobain’s likeness in Guitar Hero 5. Love signed a contract which stipulated what the use of Kurt’s likeness would be, but Activision has apparently abused this agreement. Love says she’s going to sue the $h1t out of Activision. I hope she does. Then at least that would be a big chunk out of Psykotick’s pocket.

Moron of the Moment: Bobby Kotick