Även om Microsofts uppköp av Activision Blizzard bara är några dagar gammalt och inte förväntas slutföras förrän i mitten av 2023, planerar Activision redan nu för de nya möjligheter som detta ger dem. I en intervju med VentureBeat berättar VD Bobby Kotick om tre saker som han inte har kunnat göra, men som han tror kan vara genomförbara nu.
"You look at all the opportunities that we get with a company like Microsoft. I'll give you one great example. [Xbox boss] Phil and I started riffing on things for the future. I'll give you three that are really compelling. I wanted to make a new Guitar Hero for a while, but I don't want to add teams to do manufacturing and supply chain and QA for manufacturing. And the chip shortages are enormous.
We didn't really have the ability to do that. I had a really cool vision for what the next Guitar Hero would be, and realized we don't have the resources to do that."
Det visar sig också att Kotick saknar leksakstiteln Skylanders. Han skyller det faktum att serien dog för sex år sedan på att andra spelutvecklare började släppa undermåliga alternativ:
"And Skylanders too. One of the great disappointments of my career is that other people came in and they came out with crappy alternatives. And they dumped all of these crappy alternatives in the market, and basically destroyed the market for what was a really cool future opportunity.
If you look at Skylanders, with its hardware and manufacturing and supply chain, there are the same kinds of things that we can't do but Microsoft can."
Den tredje grejen Kotick drömmer om gäller Candy Crush, som han tycker borde vara mycket mer socialt än vad det är just nu. Datta menar han att Microsoft har verktygen för:
"And in these conversations I was sharing my frustration about not having enough social capability in Candy Crush. I really want to be able to have a Candy Crush experience where players can play games against each other. And they can socialize. And they can have voice over IP and video over IP.
That's a more social game, but it's rooted in being able to play the game against another person or other people. There is nothing but opportunity for the kinds of things that we can't do on our own, and the resources that they have for us to just make a difference."
Vad skulle du tycka om ett återupplivande av Guitar Hero (tänk att få riva av Wig Wam-dängan Do Ya Wanna Taste It på plastgura medan du gör dansen från Peacemaker), och tror du att Skylanders skulle kunna bli en stor grej igen?
