Activision's Hirshberg: 'Simply a fallacy to say we're not innovating'

During DICE 2012 in Las Vegas last week, Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg gave a speech about the importance of letting the creative minds lead a video game company's business decisions, and not the other way around.

[Pandamobile]

I bet Activision is glad they merged with Blizzard when they did. Most of the stuff Activision pumps out is pretty terrible. Their one saving grace is Call of Duty.

[T900]

"Their one saving grace is Call of Duty."

Maybe financially, There is nothing innovative about COD though. If COD gets tired Activision is screwed.

Though yea they do have the golden goose at Blizzard World of Warcraft, which seems to be losing client base. I think people generally are switching to the free to play type MMOs.

[Pandamobile]

That's what I meant.

[MrBeatdown]

I wouldn't say most of it is terrible. Activision releases their share of good stuff. Blur, Singularity, and Transformers: War For Cybertron are all great games from the past couple years. Unfortunately, as good as those games are, Blur and Singularity were basically ignored. I have a hard time blaming Activision for sticking to what works, when two great new IPs like Singularity and Blur are basically ignored.

[sllshrm]

You forgot Prototype..
And the old Spider-man 2 game ..

And i loved Blur, don't know why people ignored it.

[Octo1]

Really? Please tell me what innovative thing Activision has done lately? Guitar Hero has been shelved for lack of innovation. COD would be shelved by now if not for its rabid fan base.

[christheredhead]

Actually Skylanders is pretty innovative in its own right. The portal is usable across all platforms. So, if you bought it for the Wii you could hook it up to the ps3/pc and get the same results. As long as you have the game of course.

Whether you like the game or not, its still pretty awesome that the characters can be moved from system to system seamlessly with no issues. Just plug it in, throw on the character and you are good to go.

Its sort of like cross platform DLC in a sense. You buy a character that is usable on 3 platforms. I don't think any other game offers that sort of functionality.

[Pandamobile]

Skylanders is the only decent game Activision published in 2011 that wasn't COD branded.

[christheredhead]

@Pandamobile

Yep, pretty much. COD is obviously their bread and butter. Although, I have a feeling we'll be seeing a lot more Skylanders or a few sequels of sorts.

[GraveLord]

Saying Activision doesn't innovate is a completely lie.
The correct term would be to say they don't innovate enough with all those billions they get from COD.

[RememberThe357]

Now we're getting into semantics. What they mean by "innovate" and what we mean may be very different things.

[kaveti6616]

Played MW3 a couple of days ago. Was dumbfounded by how shitty it looks. It looked as bad as Counterstrike 1.6.

The fact is that the gameplay hasn't changed, and neither have the graphics. So you're not getting anything new with Modern Warfare 3.

And no, it is not a fallacy to claim that Activision doesn't innovate. A fallacy is a break in logical reasoning. Saying that Activision doesn't innovate is merely a claim.

[Adolph Fitler]

If making your campaigns increasingly shorter, not making barely any changes, & definately none of any relevance or consequence is the new innovation....then this Activision puppet is right.

And as for the Skylanders shite.....that isn't the type of innovation that gamers want from games.....we want the actual gameplay mechanics & such to be innovative, the enviroments,etc,etc.

Play Starhawk if you want innovative....that game already should be awarded game of the year, as it kicks ass, & I see nothing coming out this year that rivals it's awesomeness...The jump up in anything & everything from Warhawk to Starhawk is like night & day.

MW hasn't innovated since MW1, & WAW is the best in the series so far....they should have just stopped with those 2 titles & made plenty of dlc for them at a reasonable price, as opposed to there current "innovative" dlc prices.

[mayberry]

goes back to killzone 3! akmir snowbase!!!!

[Smashbro29]

Seriously?! The only innovation was Skylanders. That's IT.

[gypsygib]

COD4 innovated a lot, but then they stopped trying.