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Weekend Confirmed Episode 35
by Garnett Lee, Nov 19, 2010 12:20pm PSTThanksgiving might be a week away but the new release feast is in full swing. After a couple of quick follow ups to last week's Black Ops coverage, Garnett, Brian, and Jeff serve up Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, 007: Blood Stone, and Donkey Kong Country Returns as the main dishes in Whatcha' Been Playin? The reactionary commentary of ESPN's 1st and Ten cast in response to Kobe's appearance in the Black Ops ads starts off the Warning. Your thoughts on shooter fatigue, urgency without a ticking clock, and more take the conversation right up to the Front Page. October's NPD sales numbers and Bizarre Creation's uncertain future headline a full slate of news.
Weekend Confirmed Ep. 35 - 11/19/2010
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Listen to Weekend Confirmed Episode 35 (player window will pop-up)
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Download Weekend Confirmed Episode 35
Weekend Confirmed comes in four segments to make it easy to listen to in segments or all at once. Here's the timing for this week's episode:
Whatcha' Been Playin: Start: 00:00:00 End: 00:31:07
Whatcha' Been Playin and Cannata-ford a New Game: Start: 00:32:10 End: 01:03:58
The Warning: Start: 01:05:08 End: 01:37:16
Music Break featuring "Never Get 2 See U Again": 01:37:16 End: 01:40:30
The Front Page: Start: 01:40:30 End: 02:11:14
NFL 'Tailgate': Start: 02:12:15 End: 02:20:42
Music Break this week features "Never Get 2 See U Again" by Beta. Chris Contreras aka Beta is an emcee and aspiring filmmaker hailing from Southern California. The Hip Hop culture and movies have made a huge impact in his life, and to his work. Beta is also an avid gamer. "Never Get 2 See U Again" is a collaboration between Beta and his brother Brandon Menace (who is currently in the military stationed in Japan). He has known and worked with Tak/Ribkat from the acclaimed groups Fort Minor and Styles of Beyond, for many years. For more from Beta, keep up with him on Soundcloud, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.
Original music in the show by Del Rio. Get his latest single, Small Town Hero on iTunes. Check out more, including the Super Mega Worm mix and other mash-ups on his ReverbNation page or Facebook page.
Jeff can also be seen on The Totally Rad Show. They've gone daily so there's a new segment to watch every day of the week!
Our Official Facebook Weekend Confirmed Page is coming along now so add us to your Facebook routine. We'll be keeping you up with the latest on the show there as well.
Comments
Just a note on sales, marketing, Call of Duty, and Activision.
My basketball coach in highschool gave the team a lesson during our first practice senior year. We had split up into 2 groups, and were playing a short skirmish game. My team had possesion, and we ran a smoothly exicuted pick-and-roll play, and scored.
Our next possesion, our point guard decided not to be predictable and called for a different play. Our coach blew the whistle and stopped the game.
"Why did you use a different play?" He asked. "The pick and roll worked the first time, right?".
Our point guard responded "I thought they might be ready for it this time". Our coach smiled and asked "If a play works, how many times to you repeat it before you switch to a different play?".
Our entire team started throwing out random gueses, but we had clearly missed the point.
"You use the same play as long as it works. If you run that pick and roll, and you score, then do it again and again and again until you don't score. Why change your play if you are scoring with it?"
That is EXACTLY the approach Activision takes in general, and specifically with Call of Duty. They don't give a crap about game quality or driving the medium forward. They care about making money. Or perhaps I should say, the way they judge the quality of a game is by looking at how much money it makes.
If Call of Duty keeps selling more than any other game, then Activision will not allow it to change. If Modern Warfare 3 doesn't break all kinds of sales records, then we might see things get shaken up a bit. But as things are going right now, Activision doesn't need to change their play... they are scoring every time.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 16 replies.
During the 1990s, wrestling went though a HUGE boom with WCW and WWF facing off every monday night. On WCW you had the NWO, Goldberg and a few others, on WWF you had Stone Cold vs. Vince Mcmahon, DX, The Rock, HHH and a few others.
During this time frame, both companies continued to push the same stars. It seemed to make sense. These were the guys making the money, generating ratings, and selling out Arenas. The problem was, while WWF and WCW were pushing these money makers, they were failing to build new stars and storylines to take over when fans eventually got tired of the same plots and characters.
WCW eventually folded because of the problem (people got bored of the NWO, WCW had nothing else for them, and people moved on to WWE), and WWE is still struggling to make even half the money they were making back in the 1990s.
Activision is acting the same way. They pushed Guitar Hero, Tony Hawk, COD and WOW so hard for so long. Guitar Hero and Tony Hawk no longer draw fans, no longer make money. COD and WoW have grown big enough that they can cover for the declining sales of those franchises, but what happens when the same thing happens to COD and even WoW? Activision has nothing in the pipeline to push as the next big thing.
In the short term, Activision will make much more money than companies like EA by pushing their money makers as hard and as far as they will go. Maybe Bungie's new IP will catch fire like Halo did.
But in the long run, I'm a much bigger fan of EA's strategy, where they continue to push money makers like the Sports titles, BF and NFS, while at the same time trying to develop and establish new IPs like Dead Space, the rebooted MOH, Crysis, Bulletstorm, and Dragon Age that will still be fresh when people finally get tired of the likes of The Sims or NFS.
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