Quote: Activision is "very aggressively" backing connectivity between gaming PCs and TVs - in a bid to drastically reduce the market share of Xbox Live and PSN.
Kotick claimed that "60 per cent" of Xbox Live subscribers "primarily" use the service for Call Of Duty, but that Activision "don't really participate financially in that income stream".
His aim is to encourage gamers to move away from PSN and Xbox Live and play online via gaming PCs - open platforms on which Activision could more easily manipulate payment models.
"We would really like to be able to provide much more value to those millions of players playing on Live, but it's not our network," Kotick told the FT.
He said that Activision wants to break Sony and Microsoft's "walled gardens" - XBL and PSN - "with new gamer-friendly PCs, designed to be plugged into the television".
He added: "PCs have long been used for online play, but PC gaming remains niche when the games industry needs to widen its appeal."
Activision will "very aggressively" support efforts by Dell and HP to connect PCs to TVs, said Kotick - reiterating comments CVG reported from E3.
"We have always been platform agnostic," he continued. "[Consoles] do a very good job of supporting the gamer. If we are going to broaden our audiences, we are going to need to have other devices." |