From someone on the outside who knows next to nothing about the ongoings at Activision, it seems the guy did a good job as CEO. If the share holders want a decent return on investment, maybe they should leave him there. It just seems like they have different priorities.
He didn't though he added nothing. Call of duty existed without him. He is the reason theres a COD every year and to me thats what has been plaguing the franchise. On top of firing people and getting a 140m bonus when 800+ people lost their jobs. ANd on top of restructuring pushing Vicarious visions to be a Diablo/Cod studio. Same with Toys4Bob.
He was lucky to make decisions on hot products at a time where there was no competition. Like with Guitar hero/Rockband. Then they sucked that well dry and the whole teams disbanded.
He's like any other CEO who knows nothing on video games. ANyone can make a game and then base their business off that one game. EA does the same with Madden.
Not hard to do, nor is there any risk. You can make money and still be fresh/creative. Blizzard use to be like that before Activision slowly changed the culture over there. Then they started making games with gross grinds or gross MTX'S like Hearthstone, that game was loved by everyone especially Magic players. Your money investment use to be to have this awesome deck, but then they made your deck and money you spend worthless once they updated metrics of the game to get more money out of monthly users.
Thats why people who originally made the game and ran it left.
Same with a lot of the top talent in Diablo they left with original Blizzard creators who started up their own company. Kotick and go run another business he would be great in the fast food market. He came from Vegas, used Vegas money to buy shares on Activision on the low when the company was on the verge of bankruptcy. It's more of a string of luck that at the time games were still in development.
The guy adds nothing of value, other than he knows how in the easy dirty way to make money by any means. That means cutting down labor, cutting down projects that dont have a higher enough return. Seriously fuck him and people like him. He and others at EA, and the likes know nothing about video games and exploit the gamers instead of creating long term relationships with their customers like Blizzard use to do.
Which in tern would make you always profitable, maybe not in the way call of duty did, but you would be making money, and not in the red.
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