An Open Letter to Mr. Robert A. Kotick

[permaximum]

Dear Mr. Kotick,

I'm a small businessman and a follower of your huge success in profit maximization in the Entertainment Industry. It speaks for itself that there are followers of your success in a Euroasian developing country.

Recently, I've been analysing Activision Blizzard's video games in development and tried to make predictions about potential success, net profit and their rough effect on ATVI stocks. One particular PC/Mac game - Diablo III - took my attention. It's set to be released in May 15th, 2012. I should mention that I've played Diablo and Diablo II before and since 2011, I've been waiting for the third installment in the franchise. However, information about the development of the game made me worry about the outcome. It looks the game had been in development since 2000 and after a long time the project was restarted for some reason in 2005 with a different development team in charge. Fortunately, new development started quickly but it appears it took even more than 5 years - 7 years to be exact - to deliver the final product. 12 years of development to release a new game in a very popular franchise didn't sound acceptable to me. Especially if there's a general consensus that "Diablo" title alone such as "Call of Duty" makes a game hugely profitable regardless of the game's high quality.

I don't know the details about your authorization over Blizzard Studio after Activision's merge with Vivendi. However, I'm certain this situation doesn't look good for Activison Blizzard, it's investors and the followers of your success in the industry. Hopefully Diablo III will be a huge profit for the company although a quick search for the game informed me about serious critiques and risky decisions that were made in the making of the game such as taking very different paths from the proven successful formula of the previous games. I feel if Diablo III won't bring considerable net profit to Activision Blizzard after 12 years of development and huge costs, immediate actions have to be made to ensure this situation won't occur in the future and Activision Blizzard's appeal to investors won't take any more damage. These actions may include proper adjustments to Blizzard Studio's management and development teams in the studio.

As a big follower of you and your view on the Entertainment Industry, I have no doubt that you'll take the necessary steps following Diablo III's outcome. I wish even more succesful years for you and Activision Blizzard.

Best Regards,
Permaximum

[konfeta]

Epic. Just epic. I hope he responds.

[mr punk]

lol...nice job

[Wildmoon]

............

[Karpalo]

Just buy shares. I don't think fans get much say in who get's fired and who doesn't.

[Moradon]

Dear Mr. permaximum,

Who the **** are you?

Best Regards,
Robert Kotick

[Hyliangod]

That would be Best Regards Robert Koticks Secretaries secretary.

[marshmallow]

I wonder where Diablo 3 goes on the all time most expensive game development cycles list.

[Karpalo]

Good question. I don't think it's that expensive game to produce even it took this long. not super much content nor cutting edge graphics or physics or anything like that. Probably expensive due the long cycle, but not that expensive in the end.

[jwfcp]

cmon, if you're gonna troll at least make it interesting, this was just a long, dry, bland call for everyone to hop up and say "its done when its done, lol"