Bobby Kotick must think we are all hapless suckers willing to shell out our hard-earned cash for the privilege of buying anything Activision Blizzard produces.
That’s right, folks. Bobby Kotick wants to begin selling in-engine cutscenes as full movies sometime in the near future.
Why, you ask?
Well, Kotick apparently believes that StarCraft II’s in-game cinematics are just so good that they can be edited into a single film and distributed digitally to fans worldwide.
“if we were to go to an audience and say ‘We have this great hour and a half of linear video that we’d like to make available to you at a $20 or $30 price point,’ you’d have the biggest opening weekend of any film ever,” Kotick claimed at the Communications & Entertainment Conference in an obviously overly-optimistc statement quoted by IGN.
“[So], within the next five years, you are likely to see us do that. It might be in a partnership with somebody or alone, but there will be a time where we’ll capitalize on the relationship we have with our audience; deliver them something that is really extraordinary and let them consume it directly through us instead of theatrical distribution.”
Kotick also insisted that his envisioned business paradigm was superior to the traditional model followed by current film studios.
“[Traditional] film studios are really stuck with a model that goes through theatrical distribution and takes a signification amount of the profit away.
“But if we were to deliver a film digitally this way, I’d say an extremely high percentage would then go to the theater and watch it again.”
Uh, huh. Would you!?
