Hello and welcome back to the 5 points of gaming. I was sick last week, so I might have missed the latest Konami scandal. Luckily for me, those seem to grown on trees, and I have absolutely no interest in finding out. I have no interest in laughing at Konami’s fuckups from last week, jut the ones from this week! That being said, they don’t headline the pile, nor am I sure they make the list. Nonetheless, Konami is ever present, waiting for the opportunity to strike with illogical decisions and terrible consumer advocacy. Let’s dive in.
1:DING DONG KING IS DEAD, kinda….
King was bought by Activision. Yea, there’s not too many other pairings more evil than that. Perhaps Fox News and Time Warner Cable? Or EA and Konami? Nonetheless, I can’t actually see the logic in this deal. For King, it makes complete sense, they’re set for life. I mean 5.9 billion dollars is a silly amount of money, combined with the profits from its ventures before they sold the company. On the Activision side, what’s the point? What does King bring to the table? I mean, you have a developer that has made the same exact game forever, and they hit it big once and have steadily lost traction from then until now. There is nothing King can do to expand Activision’s mobile game presence unless they want to make Call of Duty Saga. There is no gain for buying this company, besides the short term profits from King’s existing IP, which is hardly worth buying an entire company for. I mean, I read a financial website that was excited about this! WHY?! It’s a black hole for 5.9 billion dollars!
Let’s just talk numbers and common sense. The site estimates that King brings in 900 million a year. Assuming that revenue stays the same, which is unlikely as Candy Crush is not getting any more profitable, quite the opposite in fact, that means that it will take a little more than 6 years to recoup the expense from the deal. So for 6 years, at least, this is an unprofitable deal. The main argument then becomes that King helps them expand into a casual market of gaming. How? They’ve done one concept which wasn’t even original, it was just Bejeweled. Big players in a market do more than one thing, they don’t just copy paste and remain atop the market. It’s why King hasn’t had another big success, and it’s why they never will, and it’s why Activision just blew 5.9 billion dollars.
2: It’s the Call of Duty Circus…
Black Ops III released this week on PC and man was it a mess. Looking at the post-release reviews, it seems to have been sorted, but it showed out of the gate pretty pathetically. The FPS was consistently below 30 FPS on good machines, I mean how?! This isn’t a small Indie studio having trouble porting over their latest game and saying ‘oopsies’, this is one of the largest game makers in the world fucking up big time! It can’t beat the Arkham Knight debacle, but my god is that embarrassing.
Can we all just agree on something here, whether you like the series or not? Games that cost 60 dollars and are cutting edge and touted for their graphics should function extremely well, especially on higher end machines. I understand game day glitches, but not running at a consistent FPS, especially one below 30 FPS is unacceptable. I’ve heard people laud them for how quickly they fixed it, but it’s a situation where it never should have been a problem. You wouldn’t applaud an oil company for how quick they clean up an oil spill, so don’t applaud Activision for how quick they fix a problem that never should have been one.
3: The Witcher Movie:
YESSSSSSSS. I need more Geralt and Triss and Yennefer and everything amazing about the Witcher World. Please don’t mess this up! This could be a staple of a franchise if you do this right. Imagine ‘Game of Thrones’ except on the silverscreen. Who do you want to play Geralt? Off the top of my head, Michael Fassbender, although if I put some thought into it I could come up with something more suiting, but that would be a pretty good choice. Nonetheless, do it right, please.
4: Zynga continues to fail:
As if I needed to hammer home the point of a one hit wonder company not being lucrative long term anymore, Zynga continues to decline. And to their credit Zynga made different types of games. This is just further proof that King is just not a smart property to buy. They have about as much creativity as Zynga, and a lot less longevity, as they’re not even tied into a social media giant such as Facebook. Sometimes I wonder how people who run large corporations are this stupid, it’s really not that hard to figure it out Activision!
5A: Blizzard will no longer report WoW subscriber numbers:
A company with a sparkling image of dominance over multiple genres of gaming will not report declining numbers in a symbolic MMO that once dominated the genre like no other? What a shock! No, seriously, is anyone surprised by this? Why keep reporting numbers that look bad? There’s no reason and this is a smart move on Blizzard’s end. Good for them, I’m glad they decided to cut off the consumer, as all it did was generate articles about when WoW will finally shut down. Honestly, who cares?
5B: Company that Fucked up the most this week:
Dude, it’s Activision. you waste 5.9 billion dollars on a has been mobile company and release a buggy AAA game on launch, and you start looking like Konami. I mean seriously, this was just a bad week for Activision, nothing they’ve done has been good for them and certainly not for the consumer. Perhaps they should just stick their head in a hole and wait for Konami or EA to mess up before re-emerging. Perhaps they could buy Zynga and add to their newly found desire for one time wonders. While they’re at it, they could rename themselves ‘Survivor’, the ultimate one hit wonder band, and sell ‘Slap-Chops’. Or perhaps Activion could just give me 5.9 billion dollars. It’d be a better use than just giving it away for useless companies.
