We compensate artists and publishers extremely well. There are millions and millions of dollars that are being made and paid. There’s a misunderstanding of the value we bring to the catalog. What happens to your catalog in digital downloads? What happens to your merchandise? What happens to your ticket sales? When you look at the impact it can have on an Aerosmith, Van Halen or Metallica, it’s really significant, so much so that you sort of question whether or not, in the case of those kinds of products, you should be paying any money at all and whether it should be the reverse.”
– Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick says the recording industry shouldn’t look a Guitar Hero gift horse in the mouth
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Guitar Hero: World Store
With analysts predicting Activision Blizzard will generate $1.38 billion in profits during its first financial year, Bobby Kotick, CEO of the new company, can perhaps be forgiven his grandiose proclamations. After all, there’s little doubt that the pure-play online and console game publisher will be the world’s most profitable. That said, it’s hard to believe that Activision Blizzard can launch a “successful competitor” to Apple’s iTunes music service through its Guitar Hero franchise as Kotick claims.
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About John
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper. Read more »
Ethics Statement
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
alt.misc
- Godzilla’s Food, Exercise, and Dream Diary
12:58 AM: Breakfast: Two schools of fish from Tokyo Bay. Calories: 782,000. How I was feeling when I ate this: confused, irradiated, hating my size.
11:37 AM: Exercise: “Taxi Stomp” (alternating legs, for 30 blocks). Calories burned: 148,900,183. - Scenes From An Alternate Universe Where The Beatles Accepted Lorne Michaels’ Generous Offer
1983. The Beatles announce their first tour in thirteen years, but likewise announce that Michael Jackson will be going on tour with them as a one gigantic mega-concert event.
- The Golden Age of Video
Best video mashup ever.
- I’m not dead yet
A Facebook Memorial
- Pulp Fiction Audio Mix
Wow.
- A world without the Internet
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
- Google Wave Cinema: Pulp Fiction
Excellent.
- Dead Fly Art
Flughumor!
- Happy Birthday Monty Python …
… you vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous perverts
- ‘You are being shagged by a rare parrot’
Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine meet the kakapo — a fat, flightless and very randy rare parrot.
