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Was great to hear what the big wigs uptop think and where blizzard will be going soon
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Why are people surprised MM is bronze, of course the CEO of one of the biggest gaming companies in the world doesn't have time to be good at sc2 lol.
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On November 20 2012 03:11 Mozzery wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2012 02:22 Hider wrote:On November 20 2012 01:52 paralleluniverse wrote:On November 19 2012 23:54 Hider wrote:On November 19 2012 23:38 paralleluniverse wrote:On November 19 2012 23:26 Hider wrote:On November 19 2012 23:11 paralleluniverse wrote:On November 19 2012 22:59 Hider wrote:On November 19 2012 22:29 Jiddra wrote:On November 19 2012 21:25 Hider wrote:
"Well our focus right now is really on the content in Heart of the Swarm, not around what other things we can add necessarily in terms of micro-transactions or business. I think that it's much more important that we focus on making a great expansion and I think the current model is a viable model."
This is completely wrong, unfortunately. It's not really a viable profit-maximiation business model, and if shareholders/analysts paid as much attention Activision Blizzard as they do with Apple and everyone of their products, they would have demanded Mike Morhaimme to be fired immediately.
But please, Sound like you think HotS is Blizzards only game in dev!  It's very viable model for HotS in relation to all other products being developed within Blizzard. They will sell plenty enough of the game to make it a profitable affair, It's not like they panic over night and say "Ohhh all the plans we have for releases and business dev the coming 5-6 years must be scrapped, we MUST make HotS micro transaction!!!" MM is probably the guy sitting safest on his post within ActivisionBlizzard. He doesn't even need to answer economy questions at the conference calls, they know that isn't his strong side. They look to him to make the great games within Blizzard that then can be monetized by ActivisionBlizzard. Your first point is completely wrong. As someone who have spend considerable amount of time analyzing the financial statement of ATVI (probably more so than most analysts), I know what they are spending their ressources on (Titan), and unfortunately that's the problem. With the current business model ATVI has little incentive to make a esports-supportive game (as they don't make money out of it). Also Sc2 doesn't appear that much to casuals. Right now Sc2 (and HOTS) is an inbetweener and doesn't do anything particularly well. Regarding MM. Your right, he is sitting safely and that's my entire point. Analysts/investors do not spend enough time analyzing the business model of Sc2/Wow/d3 (unfortunately). Compare this to the work they do on Apple, and you realize they analyze every single competitor. Every single product in detail etc. With ATVI, unfortunately, they are just kinda lazy/priortizes larger companies. Eh. It's quite normal that the CFO answers "number" question. But regards to the CEO of Blizzard he should be asked questions regarding business model of each game and how they plan to respond to it. I read probably the most recent 4-5 earnings conferences call. Analysts are not asking the right questions (not just related to sc2). They ask the easy question so they can put a few numbers into their model and then go home early. Even though Sc2 is just a veyr small part of ATVI, a rework of the sc2 business model could still increase shareholder v alue. Why is it that no single analyst yet has asked that question (which a journalist made yesterday regarding a change in the business model of Sc2). And this is the problem. Mike Morhaimme is better as a PR guy than the business guy. Blizzard would improve shareholder value by hiring a few MBA'ers, and as a player the experience would probably be improved as well (even though I would have to pay a bit more though). If analysts/investors spend more time studying/analyzing the company, Mike Morhaimme would be under a lot more pressure. Milking money out of a game is good for the players and good for the game? No, it's good for shareholder's profit though. There could be nothing worse for the game than for it to be turned into the standard free to play microtransaction model that makes DotA 2 heroes look like April's fool jokes, and locks LoL heroes behind a paywall. Or where they basically sell items that add power such as in CoD or in virtually every single MMO, under the excuse that it adds so little power that it's somehow OK. Depends on how they do it. If ATVI just charges a higher price and doesn't offer anything besides that, your right. Bad for customers. But what I suggest is that ATVI needs to monetize esports. In return they give devote more ressources to updating the game etc. Hire progamers as developers. RIght now (despite their constant PR), Blizzard don't have an incentive to do that as they barely make any money out of esports. Blizzard is a big, rich company, yet you act as if they cannot afford to hire pro gamers. In fact, there is absolutely no reason why hiring a pro gamer would be anymore expensive than hiring any random developer. So there's no reason to think that money is holding them back there. Blizzard makes money based on royalties for esports tournaments. How do you know that they "barely make any money out of esports"? And even if that's true, that doesn't mean it's a bad business strategy. They may be trying to increase their market share at the expense of short term profits. This is a common strategy. For example, some game consoles are sold at a loss, the Kindle is also sold at a loss to maximize Amazon's market share. 1) Yeh one would think that they could afford to hire more developers. However it is definitely money that is holding them back. Why do you think WOW has a lot more developers than sc2? My best guess is that Blizzard makes revenue estimates for Sc2 and then use x% of those revenues on developing costs. This is quite normal for business's. 2) Royalities are absolute peanuts. ATVI is a billion dollar company, how much money do you think Blizzard makes out of those tournaments on an annual basis? Barely any right... You can also look at the financial statement. Take Blizzard's revenues and subtract revenues from subscription (related to WOW). You'll notice that there barely are revenue left. 3) This is completelye another discussion, and I think you are comparing apples to oragnes to a 3rd thing. First of all market share is the wrong term for Amazon's kindle strategy. Amazon never expects to make any money out of Kindle, neither long/term nor shot-term. However, what they try to set up is an effective ecosystem. Kindle sales have syngery effects on Amazon's other revenues. Sc2 not so much. Also remember that the change in business model doesn't necessarily hurt the maket share if the game becomes cheaper to play for casuals. But in general, the term market share is completely irrelevant in this scenario. Regarding long-term effect; the current business model is really bad for the long-term as the brand value of starcraft has signifcantly deterioated among casuals. My best guess is that sales of Sc3 will be even worse than sc2. With the current business model I am not totally convinced that a potential Sc3 will be profitable for ATVI. Maybe because WoW is a giant game, which has a subscription fee so that new content, such as quests, dungeons, raids, etc can be constantly produced? And SC2 isn't. It's a RTS, no content is produced other than expansions and patches, and fixing up the clusterfuck that was B.net 0.2. SC2 isn't WoW, it doesn't have a subscription fee and 10 million players that require a content patch every few months, so it obviously makes less money. Here's their financial statement: http://investor.activision.com/secfiling.cfm?filingID=1104659-12-75353&CIK=718877Subtracting revenue from subscription doesn't give a small number (subscriptions: 226, PC and others: 314). So I suggest you stop making things up about how Blizzard works, with completely unsubstantiated statements like: "Yeh one would think that they could afford to hire more developers. However it is definitely money that is holding them back." Like Mike Morhaime explain in this interview, free esports is good because it brings people in, which is basically the strategy of making a losses on Kindles and game consoles. Take a moment and think about what you are writing. Why is WOW a great success? Partly because of the business model. Also, I never said they should copy WOW. I said they should be inspired. They could also be inspired by COD which make a shitton of money. But they should optimize the business model to sc2, and the current business model is not optimized. Again regarding the financial statement. Think about what you are reading. Maybe D3 had an impact? Look at quarters prior to D3 release . Also I don't know why you look at PC revenues (as it includes COD). Or include revenue estimate from D3 in your calculations. According to my estimations Sc2 generated revenues of 1-20 millions (primarily explained by the games sold) on most quarters after the initial release. I guess they probably make 0.5-3 million on esports on an annual basis. That is relativelye little compared to it's potential. With an improved business model they should probably have been capable of generating 40$/annual basis in revenues from the most active players/viewers on an annual basis. That is roughly equal to 40* 300 = 12 million on an annual basis extracting the purchase price of sc2. Next time you respond, please take a moment and think about what I am actually writing. A more rational response would question the realism of whether they can succesfully "price discriminate". Like how would they do that in practice? My question is do you really think that there are 300,000 people willing to pay $40 a year for SC2 to get that 12 million per year total? That's step one, I'm a huge follower of SC2, and I know a lot of people who are, but I really can't afford to be spending that much per year on it. The $50+ purchase price up front was so much for me that I needed to wait until someone bought it for me as a gift to get it, (I'm a broke college graduate who has to help with a mortgage payment/loans, every $50 counts a lot, some people laugh at that, I don't). There's in all likelihood many others like me as well who would have trouble paying $40 a year for the game. Step 2 is the implementation of price discrimination as you mentioned and that is a difficult issue, but still, lets not ignore step 1. Step 1 I say is quite important, having a strong enough market size of people willing to spend hundreds of dollars over the course of a game that HAS an upfront cost, (and thus barrier to entry, thus limiting its initial potential market penetration) is an issue.
I easily spent about 100 in the last year. couple gsl passes and a couple mlg passes.
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On November 20 2012 15:08 heyitskez wrote:
Why are people surprised MM is bronze, of course the CEO of one of the biggest gaming companies in the world doesn't have time to be good at sc2 lol.
i wonder how many people 45 and over even play on teh BNet2 Ladder ?
There is a guy who lives in the apartment building near my house who is definitely over 40 and is in Diamond. This guy hasn't had a job in 4 years and is grossly exaggerating a back injury to collect Worker's Comp.
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On November 21 2012 06:17 JimmyJRaynor wrote:i wonder how many people 45 and over even play on teh BNet2 Ladder ? There is a guy who lives in the apartment building near my house who is definitely over 40 and is in Diamond. This guy hasn't had a job in 4 years and is grossly exaggerating a back injury to collect Worker's Comp.
I'm 41, and a number of friends my age play regularly. They're all over the map in terms of both skill and the time they put into the game.
Still, it does take time to learn to play at even a gold-league level, and I'd guess that Mr. Morhaime's schedule doesn't give him much time for more than a couple games a week.
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I wonder how long it takes them to bring up some kind of ATP tour system like in tennis.
I think that is maybe the best way to get all tournaments of the various styles and classes together. It could also be a way to give every tournament a meaning, there could be world wide rankings and perhaps even a yearly wrap-up tournament.
And perhaps they can get the major tournaments to rethink their tourney structure.
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On November 20 2012 15:08 heyitskez wrote:
Why are people surprised MM is bronze, of course the CEO of one of the biggest gaming companies in the world doesn't have time to be good at sc2 lol.
as long as you know how sc2 works its impossible to be bronze
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I think their mentality is getting better (about that 720p for free) More free content will definitely bring it more casual / new viewers ^.^
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On November 23 2012 07:42 sharkie wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2012 15:08 heyitskez wrote:
Why are people surprised MM is bronze, of course the CEO of one of the biggest gaming companies in the world doesn't have time to be good at sc2 lol. as long as you know how sc2 works its impossible to be bronze
There are plenty of people out there who have a basic idea of how the game works (for example, to the level of knowing how to make buildings and units) who play infrequently and never come close to getting out of bronze league.
Usually their problems center around having no clue what an efficient build is or spending lots of time thinking about each thing they want to do.
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Is it me or does Mike kinda look like Mel Gibson in that picture?
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On November 27 2012 08:26 Antisocialmunky wrote:
Is it me or does Mike kinda look like Mel Gibson in that picture?
haha just a tad.
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On November 27 2012 10:26 ReachTheSky wrote:Show nested quote +On November 27 2012 08:26 Antisocialmunky wrote:
Is it me or does Mike kinda look like Mel Gibson in that picture? haha just a tad.
I agree with this statement lol, but yes we need esports in major media. Where to start o_O?
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Even Mike Morhaime approves that IdrA made a blast at BNet WC!
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On November 21 2012 13:23 Lysenko wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2012 06:17 JimmyJRaynor wrote:i wonder how many people 45 and over even play on teh BNet2 Ladder ? There is a guy who lives in the apartment building near my house who is definitely over 40 and is in Diamond. This guy hasn't had a job in 4 years and is grossly exaggerating a back injury to collect Worker's Comp. I'm 41, and a number of friends my age play regularly. They're all over the map in terms of both skill and the time they put into the game. Still, it does take time to learn to play at even a gold-league level, and I'd guess that Mr. Morhaime's schedule doesn't give him much time for more than a couple games a week.
It takes time to play enough games to get to gold league, even if you can play better than at a gold league level, lol. Time that he may not have.
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On November 27 2012 13:13 Qwyn wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2012 13:23 Lysenko wrote:On November 21 2012 06:17 JimmyJRaynor wrote:i wonder how many people 45 and over even play on teh BNet2 Ladder ? There is a guy who lives in the apartment building near my house who is definitely over 40 and is in Diamond. This guy hasn't had a job in 4 years and is grossly exaggerating a back injury to collect Worker's Comp. I'm 41, and a number of friends my age play regularly. They're all over the map in terms of both skill and the time they put into the game. Still, it does take time to learn to play at even a gold-league level, and I'd guess that Mr. Morhaime's schedule doesn't give him much time for more than a couple games a week. It takes time to play enough games to get to gold league, even if you can play better than at a gold league level, lol. Time that he may not have.
Good point! If you just happen not to place there to begin with.
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EPT
