You know how EA and Activision like to spend upwards of $50 million marketing their AAA games? Well, if you thought that kind of wasteful spending was relegated to the confines of home console gaming, think again. According to Activision's vice president of mobile development Greg Canessa, the company sees a huge opportunity to cash in on the mobile audience, soon...very soon.
In an interview with CVG [via GI.biz] talks about how mobile technology is finally catching up to current gen home consoles. He talks about Activision's foray into the mobile market and their approach to IP and brand building across various markets, saying...
Console and PC are still the major focus, but we feel that mobile is an important segment for our brands going forward.“The CPU and GPU capabilities of mobile devices will reach Xbox 360 levels of graphical fidelity and processing power within the next generation,"If you take a step back and think about what Activision is really good at, it's about creating best-in-class entertainment experiences. And we do it by giving games studios the freedom to do what they want.We live by the mantra of the independent studio model, more so than some of our competitors who say they do, but really don't.
To be honest, I never thought about Activision using the indie-design paradigm for game development. In all honesty, none of their AAA games feel like they were designed in the same kind of similitude as an indie title, especially with the creative restrictions applied to titles like Call of Duty, Guitar Hero and Tony Hawk. Also, need I remind everyone of Project Icebreaker?
Regardless, Canessa continues to promote the new studio that will be tasked with handling Activision's mobile gaming needs by bringing up a point that usually makes budget-conscious core gamers cringe, saying...
I would definitely say that one of our competitive advantages is the strength of our brands. The creation of new IP is expensive, and when you consider how much money we spend on marketing our IP, we can apply that halo affect to our mobile properties. That gives us a tremendous advantage.You are going to continue to see us take advantage of our big marketing campaigns to help our mobile products too.
I know the common corporate-apologists defense of this kind of industry-sucking marketing tactic is that it's necessary to bring brand awareness to both select demographics and the mainstream audience, but I keep getting pulled back to products like Angry Birds, DayZ, League of Legends and Counter-Strike...products that sold themselves both with quality and word of mouth. Seems like a foregone marketing measure these days.
I suppose it's easier to cue big budget action game trailer #571 for a generically named mobile spin-off of Call of Duty, plaster posters everywhere and finally, send some swag to top gaming journalists for some early quote-worthy praises like “OMG, 5/5....GOTY! This is GOTY!! THIS. IS. GOTY!!!”
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