Vivendi: Treyarch Has 'Done Better' Than Infinity Ward, IW Finished Restructuring
"The Treyarch studio, which made this year's game, has done better than what the Infinity Ward studio could achieve a year ago," said CEO Jean-Bernard Levy at the Morgan Stanley TMT Conference on Friday. He's certainly right sales-wise, as Cod Blops broke the entertainment industry-wide launch day and five-day sales records set by Infinity Ward's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 last year. Cold Blops sold-through over $650 million in five days after launching on November 9.
Levy also reveals that "We have reconstructed Infinity Ward," adding that the company is "very happy" with the result. IW suffered a mass exodus of staff after Activision fired co-founders Jason West and Vince Zampella in March for allegedly trying to "steal" the studio and using its resources for personal benefit. Around thirty-five had left as of May, with a number joining West and Zampella at their new studio Respawn Entertainment.
Infinity Ward will head back down the Cod mine, joining Treyarch and fledging studio Sledgehammer Games. "We believe this set up of studios working on Call of Duty has demonstrated it can do very well," Levy opined. It's been rumoured, bizarrely, that Sledgehammer might be working on an instalment starring space marines.
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Better = selling more, what a joke.
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But the heads of Activision aren't gamers. So decision makers are only able understand the bottom line of a game. That and their opinion of the crew behind developing games that perform well.
At this point Activision can't have a well informed opinion of Treyarch without the people that helped form Treyarch's culture, therefore they are moving them under an organization/process that hasn't been gutted.
And this PR sounds like a shot against the former management of Treyarch. -
Activision or any publisher for that matter in any industry doesn't really care about how good a game/book/album/film is. At best they want a them to be good because good likely (but many times not always) means good sales. That's it. From Activision's standpoint better = selling more. You can't fault them for that. It's a business.
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