Kotick exposes Activision's ruthless penny pinching

Bobby Kotick has revealed the extent of Activision's cost-saving thriftiness - including how it employs specialists to check how much money the firm is paying per hour for energy.

[MR LOOKINGBILL]

its part of mr kotichs and his company heritage.

[hay]

Lol! They have Greediness Managers over at Activision?

[Blinding_Solo]

This guy is popular this month? I've seen more articles of him than games I want to know more about. This company is very greedy and after MW2 they won't see another penny from me just like Micro$oft won't see any money coming from me.

[CptBach]

This is what a CEO is supposed to do

[NYC_Gamer]

he's really no different from any other business man

[Yi-Long]

... but some businessmen actually care about their product and their customers.

Bobby/Activision clearly doesn't. They care about 1 thing. Money.

[CombatEvolving]

Yeah, but what kind of a douche bag brings up something like that? Keep that penny pinching shit to yourself. With the amount of profit they are generating they could easily show a little more respect for their customers. So many companies already do and still make profit.

[AKissFromDaddy]

He's just trying to save as much money as possible and attract game studios as well. This article elucidates that Kotick knows how to save money to use it for other projects.

[nickjkl]

you mean cod i bet you he would make his devs work in the dark if he could

[IrishYamato]

I think it's about time that Scrooge met the Ghost of Christmas future.

[dredgewalker]

I wouldn't expect nothing less from this man when it comes to money.

[Ares84PS3]

Why doesn't he just leav games alone and go ruin some other business.

I understand that the point of business is to make money but you have to be careful not to anger your costumers.

I work in a business too and we can't charge people for every damn thing because if we do they would get angry and never come back.

The main point is to keep the costumers happy so they come back for more. Bobby is missing this point and like a greedy souless bastard want's to charge you for everything because he clearly doesn't understand his costumers and the business he is in.

He is the worst business man that I've ever know and if they continue on this path than they will surley loose costumers and money.

[mzm119]

As long as people will pay, which they will, they will charge.

[lastdual]

Last time I checked, people are still buying COD, so apparently plenty of customers are coming back for more.

Honestly, games are a LUXURY item. They're entertainment. Kotick & Co can charge as much as they want, nickel and dime customers however they feel they can get away with, etc. It either works or it doesn't. And if it doesn't, then it's Activision that stands to lose the most.

That's why it's great that there is competition in the market place. Activision doesn't have a monopoly, and if we get sick of their practices, we'll just take our business elsewhere. It's not the end of the world by any means.

[CombatEvolving]

Too bad their two best mediocre games have a bunch of dumbasses addicted. I probably won't buy Bungie's next game at this point. This guy is the biggest douche bag on the planet.

@mzm119
That would be the day I play old games for the rest of forever.

[mzm119]

What are people going to do when Kotick implements these revenue generating channels and they work so well that other companies follow Activision's model? From what I read on these boards, most n4g.com readers would stop buying video games altogether.

I am not going to like paying the fees but most likely, I will pay them. Video games are relatively cheap entertainment (assuming you're an adult). I can drop 60 dollars in a night at the bar or on a football ticket while a game can keep me entertained for months.

[mzm119]

Combat, Haha then they will start releasing DLC for old games to try to get ya!

[wenaldy]

He's worse than Mr. Krabs.... :/

[DaBadGuy]

It's almost as if Mr Burns is running Activision.

[djfullshred]

I find a lot of Kotick's comments assinine...but I don't see any material to rip on him in an article that talks about how they try to keep costs down. So does the company I work for, as well as just about any other company in any industry.

[kingme71]

I have never liked Kotick or much cared for his comments, but this one is entirely the ignorance of the author.

Large companies are ALWAYS looking at things like energy savings. This is nothing new. Take any corporation with lots of locations in large space and what seems like a small energy saving is HUGE and can save millions. Imagine if you have a 40,000 SqFt building and raised the temperature one degree so the AC ran less each day. Now look at that over 40 such buildings and tell me that isn't important? I have a friend that works at a large bank and they have teams of people that monitor this sort of thing across all their branches.