Opinion: Activision Aren't Learning From Their Mistakes!

I won't lie - I'm not a big fan of Activision. I think of them as the overlord of the videogame industry. Sure, they come up with good ideas sometimes, but then if that idea is successful they will sit there making sequel after sequel.

Guitar Hero, Call of Duty, Crash Bandicoot, Tony Hawk, Spyro and other franchises they have simply flogged to death. Now, I know they announced they won't be making Guitar Hero games anymore (at least for a little while anyway), and it was this that made me thought they were changing.

I was still a little annoyed. At the end of the day, when Guitar Hero first came out it got good reviews, sold well and was loved by many people. Things could have stayed that way a lot longer had GH not become an annual thing. Activision failed to realise that people would come to a point where they didn't need anymore songs to play on their plastic guitars.

Arguably, GH would have worn out after a while anyway - but my point is it could have lasted a lot longer if Activision hadn't tried squeezing every last penny out of it, in the space of around half a decade.

But they seem to be making the same mistakes over and over again! At a time when Guitar Hero was starting to lag in the sales side of things, Activision launched the Tony Hawk: RIDE and SHRED games.
These were also games that came with tacky plastic peripherals. They were also games that sold poorly and have potentially killed the (once credible) Tony Hawk franchise.

THAT FAMILY DOESN'T EVEN HAVE A CONSOLE!!

 So that's 2 series that have crashed and burned thanks to the overuse of plastic peripherals. Surely Activision have learnt their lesson now?

Evidently not.
Skylanders was a bit of a surprise hit when it came out this Christmas - and guess what - it comes with a bunch of plastic crap. Now, I'm not saying Skylanders is a bad game - it's fun in its own little way.

What I'm saying is with 2 big name franchises killed due to the deadly combination of annual releases and plastic, why didn't Activision think twice before announcing Skylanders Giants (a sequel to Skylanders) yesterday?

If Skylanders becomes annual I can see it becoming the 3rd franchise to be killed by the deadly combination and I just wish Activision would learn something from the past decade.

Maybe Activision's lax attitude towards this situation is because as long as they have Call of Duty, they have a financial safety net. But with annual sequels of CoD too, surely there will come a time where that series starts to lag as well?

What do you think?

Posted in: Game Features, Games