OscarGungan Posted January 31, 2019 Share Posted January 31, 2019 I remember buying the Activision Anthology on my Android phone years ago, but its recently fallen out of the Google Play store. I thought when Atari Flashback Vol. 3 was announced it would surely include the Activision catalog, but no dice. Does anyone think an Activision/Imagic collection for the current generation is an inevitably. I've grown to love the Switch for its capacity of being a retro machine and a AAA console. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atariboy Posted January 31, 2019 Share Posted January 31, 2019 Activision would rather toss them in as extras in Call of Duty titles. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flojomojo Posted January 31, 2019 Share Posted January 31, 2019 The mobile ports were done by Code Mystics and they've stated they can't update them without a new contract. Same for the Infocom collections, since Activision owns the license. I have read stories of Activision (and Blizzard, which they own) cutting back and saving money. Perhaps the retro collections don't sell very well? Or not enough to keep up with the maintenance demands of the mobile store? There are bunches of Activision games on 2017 and 2018 AtGamea Flashback products, including an HDMI "Blast!" stick. The best of the bunch is the Atari Flashback 9, which has an SDcard slot so you can add more games yourself. This one has a bunch of good Activision games onboard. I'd like them on Switch too, but we get what we get because of IP licensing. I would LOVE a well-curated collection like what was done for the SNK 40th anniversary set. In that case, I'd say the presentation was better than the games they included. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Agent X Posted February 11, 2019 Share Posted February 11, 2019 I have read stories of Activision (and Blizzard, which they own) cutting back and saving money. Perhaps the retro collections don't sell very well? Or not enough to keep up with the maintenance demands of the mobile store? I'd be surprised if one of the world's largest entertainment software publishers would nix a collection like this purely because of financial belt-tightening. Code Mystics already has excellent emulation of the Atari 2600 (and Atari 5200, too) up and running on current platforms. They just need to whip up a new user interface, and...ahem..."patch" in a suitable system of tracking the player's accomplishments. All of the versions of Activision Anthology (a.k.a. Activision Hits Remixed) were extremely well done, on every platform they were released on. It would be awesome to see new and improved versions for current platforms. The accessibility through modern digital download stores would enable this collection to remain relevant for years and decades to come. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flojomojo Posted February 11, 2019 Share Posted February 11, 2019 I agree with you about how it would be nice to have modern collections (the Remixed collection is ten years old), but it's looking more unlikely than ever. Big layoffs are coming this week. :-( https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-08/activision-is-said-to-plan-job-cuts-as-sales-of-key-games-stall https://kotaku.com/activision-blizzard-employees-brace-for-massive-layoffs-1832488999 Mobile releases aren't as evergreen as console games; they need care and feeding to work with the ever-changing mobile OS and API updates, both on Apple and android stores. This article is particularly dire, Fortnite "doomed" Activision/Blizzard by being free. https://www.ccn.com/activision-blizzard-employees-doomed-by-fortnites-dominance Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atariboy Posted February 11, 2019 Share Posted February 11, 2019 (edited) Activision needs a big shakeup, so that's all good news for gamers. That said, corporations are just like private citizens. Let's say that you have an old house that could greatly benefit from new windows, which theoretically would slowly pay for themselves in energy savings. That doesn't necessarily mean you'll just turn around and have new windows installed, if it means you won't be able to keep up with your mortgage payments or put food on the table. Opportunity costs rather than profitability is the real issue keeping such a collection away from current consoles. Heck, Activision already has emulated a portion of these games on the PS4 and XB1, as seen in Call of Duty WWII and perhaps others. It's not like it would an expensive proposition unlikely to return a profit to put together a 2600 collection on modern hardware. The issue ultimately is that the potential return is small potatoes for a company that can sell millions of copies of a big budget release and still view it as a sales failure. So investing even the small amount of resources necessary to do such a project just isn't worth their time to pursue. Edited February 11, 2019 by Atariboy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flojomojo Posted February 11, 2019 Share Posted February 11, 2019 While I'm sure it's standard practice for companies of this size and complexity, I find it viscerally disgusting to hear about massive overcompensation of executives while people are being laid off. According to these articles, Bobby Kotick receives about $28M per year as CEO of Activision. The CEO himself could fund a retro product with spare personal funds if he cared to. I suppose the "opportunity cost" for him would be another cost of lacquer on his yacht or some other golden toilet kind of thing. The poor dear. $28M is 306x the salary of a median Activision employee (which is $93K). https://kotaku.com/activisions-ceo-made-28-6-million-last-year-300-times-1825715966 Someone in the comments said that is enough to give each of the 4000 employees a $7000 raise. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OscarGungan Posted February 11, 2019 Author Share Posted February 11, 2019 One headscratcher to me is they allowed Activision games to be on the AtGames consoles. I'm not sure why that didn't translate into AtGames software products. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flojomojo Posted February 11, 2019 Share Posted February 11, 2019 Probably because Activision didn't have to lift a finger to license their ancient ROMs to AtGames. They just had to cash a check. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zzip Posted February 11, 2019 Share Posted February 11, 2019 While I'm sure it's standard practice for companies of this size and complexity, I find it viscerally disgusting to hear about massive overcompensation of executives while people are being laid off. According to these articles, Bobby Kotick receives about $28M per year as CEO of Activision. The CEO himself could fund a retro product with spare personal funds if he cared to. I suppose the "opportunity cost" for him would be another cost of lacquer on his yacht or some other golden toilet kind of thing. The poor dear. $28M is 306x the salary of a median Activision employee (which is $93K). https://kotaku.com/activisions-ceo-made-28-6-million-last-year-300-times-1825715966 Someone in the comments said that is enough to give each of the 4000 employees a $7000 raise. While I'm sure it's standard practice for companies of this size and complexity, I find it viscerally disgusting to hear about massive overcompensation of executives while people are being laid off. According to these articles, Bobby Kotick receives about $28M per year as CEO of Activision. The CEO himself could fund a retro product with spare personal funds if he cared to. I suppose the "opportunity cost" for him would be another cost of lacquer on his yacht or some other golden toilet kind of thing. The poor dear. $28M is 306x the salary of a median Activision employee (which is $93K). https://kotaku.com/activisions-ceo-made-28-6-million-last-year-300-times-1825715966 Someone in the comments said that is enough to give each of the 4000 employees a $7000 raise. That's a little bit misleading on the part of Kotaku. Most of that 28M is in the form of stock and options that are worth almost half as much now as when that SEC filing was filed. The options may be completely worthless now since the stock has fallen so much. His actual salary is 1.7M It's still gross, but stock/option grants don't come out of the company's treasury, so it isn't money that would be available to save employees jobs 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JeffVav Posted February 12, 2019 Share Posted February 12, 2019 Probably because Activision didn't have to lift a finger to license their ancient ROMs to AtGames. They just had to cash a check. It doesn't matter who the licence goes to, lawyers get involved, so they have to lift a finger and there's still some level of opportunity cost by way of the lawyers' fees. With the disclaimer that I have no special knowledge on this, it's not uncommon that companies are more willing to licence things to third parties for markets they aren't already into themselves than to markets they do. e.g. they might licence their games to AtGames because they don't make plug n' play TV devices, but they mightn't, say, licence their 2600 games to Atari because they do ship directly on any platform that Atari would ship to (console, desktop, mobile). Presumably they don't licence out work they can do themselves, but can't justify the cost-benefit of doing it themselves all the same. On that theory, for example, Hallmark has a better chance of making a Pitfall Harry Christmas ornament than Atari does of getting Pitfall! added to Atari Vault as DLC. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flojomojo Posted February 23, 2019 Share Posted February 23, 2019 That's a little bit misleading on the part of Kotaku. Most of that 28M is in the form of stock and options that are worth almost half as much now as when that SEC filing was filed. The options may be completely worthless now since the stock has fallen so much. His actual salary is 1.7M It's still gross, but stock/option grants don't come out of the company's treasury, so it isn't money that would be available to save employees jobs Kotick in the news http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/337304/EA_and_Activision_Blizzard_CEOs_featured_in_The_100_Most_Overpaid_CEOs_report.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+GamasutraFeatureArticles+%28Gamasutra+Feature+Articles%29 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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