Time for an editorial. Bear with me if this goes kind of “inside baseball.”
Singularity ships today. For a limited time, if you buy the Xbox 360 version, you will get a voucher in the box to send away for a free copy of Prototype. Prototype is pretty cool — I’m still playing through it, it got lost in the crazy shuffle that was my life last summer. But it also came out at a rough spot in the economic kerfuffle that has happening in 2009, and I think it kind of got forgotten (though reviews were just shy of 80% and NPD says it sold 500,000 units, which ain’t bad.) I thought that bonus deal was a good thing, in that one new IP was helping another.
Now, depending on who you talk to, they might not even know either game exists. Modern Warfare 2 was and is a juggernaut, grabbing critical acclaim, world records, and headlines in equal measure. Guitar Hero is the market leader for music games, even after last year’s “go big” ethos became this year’s “uh, okay, now let’s go smaller ’cause we think that’s smarter.” And while I definitely expect each new game, whether it’s part of a franchise or not, to deliver something new and innovative to me, I think a lot of people probably don’t realize that Activision just put out its fourth original IP in the last year. Prototype (June 2009), DJ Hero (October 2009), Blur (May 2010) and today’s Singularity make up the quartet. That’s pretty impressive; most companies launch maybe one a year, two if they feel aggressive.
That’s because launching a new IP is very risky. There’s no built-in awareness, the way you have with a game like Transformers: War for Cybertron or Goldeneye 007, so you have to fight for every scrap of attention. It’s hard to get on the cover of magazines, since they generally want recognizable games to help them sell issues. You are basically going on the strength of the game’s idea, the talent of its developers, and the craftiness of the marketing and PR department, and hoping your intended audience thinks it’s worth their time and money. It could be a surprise hit or it could disappear altogether, along with all the money poured into it. It is, like I said before, very risky.
But when you have megahits, you have the ability to take those risks. Activision Blizzard has had great success with its big franchises — Guitar Hero, Call of Duty, Tony Hawk, Warcraft, Diablo, Starcraft — and, well, that money goes back into game development and funding fresh ideas, both in those existing franchises and planting the seeds for new ones. Of course, those new IPs still have to bring home the bacon, but as always, the market decides what happens in that regard.
Truthfully, I think a lot of folks who accuse Activision of “milking” its titles don’t look beyond GH and COD when they levy that critique — but these four games are proof to the contrary. And if you believe new IPs are crucial to the success of the gaming industry, please shop accordingly.
