Your favorite gaming industry analyst, Wedbush Morgan’s Michael Pachter, believes that tough times are ahead for Activision. After posting extremely impressive financial results during a (long) stretch of time where most publishers were struggling, Activision’s Q2 financials weren’t the best. According to Industry Gamers, Pachter said:
The Q2 results reinforce Activision’s dependence on a handful of franchises, and calls into question whether its future franchises will contribute meaningfully to the bottom line as performance of additional IP seems uncertain at best.
We fear that after so many years of near-flawless execution, Activision has begun to slip a bit, perhaps in the process becoming overly reliant on the parts of the business that are phenomenally successful.
Do you agree with Pachter’s assessment? Is Activision on the decline? Or is his analysis along the lines of his awesome estimate where he allowed himself a two-million unit margin of error?
Activision will make money this year and next. Blizzard will carry them.
@Ray
How do I become an analyst like this guy? I can do this job.
@smartguy I'm sure it will make money, but will it be as profitable as when it had WoW, the real Call of Duty, and Guitar Hero to draw from? *shrug*
As for becoming an analyst, perhaps we should start a firm and spout predictions that are slightly smarter than Pachter's. Ha!
@Ray
Cataclysm will drop this year and SC2 dropped already. Blizzard has stated that they will release an IP the next 3 years. Presumably that would be another chapter of SC and Diablo 3. In addition to yet another WoW expansion. Those expansions bring in a lot of people who cancelled their subs.
As far as our own firm goes…that could be doable.
You can call it SmartPad jk lol. For reasons already stated Activision will still be making the $$$. What I think they will do and are doing is they will over saturate the market while these IPs are still red hot so they can snatch up as much money as possible before the gp gets tired of them. As far as Patcher, every empire has to fall sooner or later and he just wants to be the first one to say it so when it does happen he can say I told you so.
Activision has future gains on the horizon. If they can last about three more years, Bungie can probably carry them for the next ten.
I would agree with what Pachter is saying on this one. The over reliance that Activision has had on things in the past are getting old, like Ray stated Guitar Hero, WoW, and Call of Duty. Guitar Hero is going down in stock simply because the people who are interested in the games already have so many of them (I have 7 different variations personally), and I think that the Call of Duty franchise is beginning to get that way with all of the variants of that that are available just on this current gen. Like Smartguy said though, Blizzard will keep making them money and that will be their saving grace for now. As for what the future holds, I really don't know what they are doing for the future…@Sandrock what things will Bungie bring them for the next 10 years?
@bsu
blizzard will always make money. They go a long ways to making sure they don't release a bad product.
@Smartguy
Oh I believe it. I know some people complain that they are always releasing games of the same sort (Warcraft, Diablo, and Starcraft), but they always sell. And from what I have seen they know how to keep people playing their games. I can't tell you how many people I know that got the 10 day free trial for WoW and ended up buying subscriptions for several years now.
@BSU
Bungie signed a ten year contract with Activision over an unannounced game/franchise. Big money flow to a very successful dev with a ten year ball and anchor aren't normal publishing deals. Whatever Bungie is planing, Activision sees big money to be made off it.
@sandrock
I had forgot about that. I can only hope that Bungie is offered at least some control over the fate of their IP. I'd hate to see it bastardized for the sake of sequels.
@ SG
Bungie made and saved the Xbox and XBL and everyone knows it, I think if anyone could get control (or at least some of it) of their IP from Activision its Bungie.
@Smartguy
From my understanding, Activision has no say about what goes on at Bungie. (As long as Bungie meets their end of the contract of course.)