In the past few hours, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick said that following the acquisition by Microsoft, he would like to dust off buried franchises like Guitar Hero and Skylanders.
Not much time has passed since the sensational news of the acquisition of Activision Blizzard (Diablo, Overwatch, Call of Duty) by Microsoft, and in fact they continue to arrive in the world of videogame journalism confirmations and denials regarding what will happen to the various brands and franchises owners. If, for example, Phil Spencer has recently confirmed that he wants to keep Call of Duty cross-platform, and therefore continue to release them also on future Sony home consoles, there are still many questions. It makes us smile to think that Crash Bandicoot was once exclusive to Sony, then became multiplatform and finally… here we are.
We have also returned to talk of brands that have now fallen into oblivion, such as Guitar Hero or Skylanders, but which have made a generation dream. In an interview with VentureBeat, Bobby Kotick, the current CEO of Activision Blizzard, mentioned precisely these two franchises that were once extremely popular for the company, but have since been shelved for numerous reasons. One of these was the need to have an actual separate creation and production team, something the company could not actually afford. Unlike Microsoft, which instead of economic availability has it all right.
Bobby Kotick is hoping for a return of Guitar Hero and Skylanders
Kotick stated in the interview:
[Il CEO di Xbox] Phil [Spencer] and I have started to put things in order for the future. I’ll tell you three really interesting ones. I’ve always wanted to create a new Guitar Hero, but never wanted to add any other teams to take care of the production and supply chain. And we are still in severe chip deficiency. […] We didn’t have the skills to deal with it. I had a pretty clear and interesting view of the next Guitar Hero, and I realized we couldn’t afford it in terms of resources.
And Skylanders too. One of the biggest disappointments of my career has been seeing other people intruding and creating bad alternatives. And they threw them all into the market, virtually destroying any possible future opportunities. If you look at Skylander and consider the same things mentioned above, hardware, production and supply chain, we are always faced with a situation that we cannot deal with, but Microsoft can.
Considering that the Guitar Hero series has sold more than 25 million copies in its existence and that Skylanders was even more popular, with more than 3 billion in sales and 300 million toys sold, we can understand where Bobby Kotick would like to parry. It will be necessary to see what Microsoft has in mind considering the huge amount of franchises it has acquired with Activision. Let us know what you think below in the comments, we will continue to keep you updated with all the news, guides and reviews on videogame and tech! And if you are interested in game keys at advantageous prices, we recommend that you take a look at the InstantGaming catalog!