Shed the FIFA license (fifa wants more and more licensing fees every year) - and spin Activision sports out as its own entity/product line.
The successful products are fully capable of sustaining their own production & staff, without having to feed the corporate coffers of a conglomerate that only wants increasing profits without any regard to the products and teams themselves.
Everyone at the company wins except for the overlords who lorded over the profits and continued on the path of consolidation for the only reason of lining their own pockets.
FIFA is EA, not Activision. Although they’ve taken your advice, FIFA 23 is the last one the licence the name, it’s going to be renamed EA Sports FC for the next one.
> What's left for Activision Blizzard? What can they do with a company this gutted?
Amazing IP! The loud minority hates every new game/expansion with a passion everything, but the majority of people I talked to enjoy playing overwatch 2, enjoy the new wow expansion, and most importantly we'd all (begrudgingly) buy any new warcraft/starcraft/diablo/overwatch game.
Overwatch 2 is the most disappointing sequel to a game I’ve ever played. It’s literally overwatch 1 with like 3 new hero’s and a couple maps. Blows my mind that they had the nerve to slap a 2 on it.
That being said, I love the game because I lived Overwatch 1.
100% agree to all that. But I think every game being released is considered disappointing at this point. I'm trying to hold off judgement until PvE comes out ... hopefully this lifetime.
Anyways my quote is "enjoy playing", and sounds like we both fall into that category. The game engine and polish with the original is often overlooked IMO.
Your anecdata isn't backed up by sales numbers. WoW subscriber count peaked a decade ago at 12 million. Blizzard last publicly shared numbers in 2015 and it was under 5 million, and most third party estimates show it continuing to decline. Overwatch 2 will be difficult to directly compare to Overwatch 1 because it's F2P but time will tell.
WoW, Call of Duty, Overwatch 2, Diablo: Immortal, etc. etc. A lot of people might post vocally online about how awful a lot of stuff they've been doing is, but they're definitely making bank from stuff like the Overwatch 2 shop. It's generally only a vocal minority that talks about how much they dislike the microtransactions or skin prices.
There is money. The properties themselves are money mints.
The problem is that it's not enough money for the greedy owners behind the scenes who have nothing to do with the games themselves. Think the hedge fund owners, the banks, the note owners, etc. They want increasing amounts of money such that there's no money left to sustain the teams making the games.
Is there an example of a company making money in gaming with NFTs? From what I recall, everyone who talked about it has backed away from it. Generally accompanied by some statement about how it has no place in gaming.
- stock value down considerably
- shareholders just lost their only chance at a decent buyout
- just finished worst media cycle in recent history
What's left for Activision Blizzard? What can they do with a company this gutted?
Edit: This is a sincere question, I ask it as someone who enjoyed Diablo, Overwatch and Hearthstone. Where do they go from here?