I think their quantity > quality formula is starting to catch up to Activision.
For those of you too young to remember the Video Game crash back in the 80's, companies tried to make a quick buck and released games that were crap. Bad games quickly flooded the market and the average consumer lost interest and if it weren't for Nintendo saving the Video Game industry back in 1986 then things would have been different today.
Activision has adopted a similar formula of flooding the game market with games that are often bad with the exception of Call of Duty titles which will soon follow suit if they keep releasing CoD games every other year and a few Spider-man games which are hits and misses.
This story though is for one of the oldest games on the market; Tony Hawks Pro Skater which has undergone a change name and is now called Shred for the latest installment of the series which only sold 3000 copies in it's first week. However Eric Hirshberg, CEO of Activision Publishing, thinks that sales of the game will pick up during the holiday season.
"There's hopefully a method to that madness," Hirshberg said. "For the first time we're targeting that game to kids. It's a gift-oriented game, but, that said, we need to build awareness for the game still. ... I think you'll hopefully see a bigger ramp-up as we get further into the gift giving season."
Hmmm. If they were targeting to kids then they would have marketed to kids since the beginning. I think that they are not going to market to kids but are hoping that the game sells enough copies for the Christmas rush to recoup the money they lost to develop the title. Tony Hawks is a retired skater and now it's time for Activision to retire the series. Guitar Hero should be next.
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