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Activision CEO Bobby Kotick has offered a reason for the cancellation of True Crime: Hong Kong, simply stating that the company didn’t have the skills to pull it off.
The news surfaced as Kotick offered advice to other CEOs. Asked by Forbes ‘what’s the one best thing you can do to encourage innovation?’, Kotick promoted the notion of ‘one best thing’.
“Do the one best thing you know and you may fail in it, but focus on the one thing, don’t get distracted.” he said.
“Over the years we’ve pared down the number of titles that we make to allow for focus. And last year I can tell you that we cancelled two really big projects and delayed one project for a long time, and it was all about the commitment to excellence.
“In one case we were doing a game [True Crime: Hong Kong] that was more of an open world Grand Theft Auto style game, something that our company had aspired to build just a little bit more audience friendly, not as violent as Grand Theft Auto, but more focused on the driving and the fighting, and less about the profanity. And so it wouldn’t have been as controversial content, but really great dynamic in the game play.”
“And we recognised that after giving it a good college try for three years we didn’t have the skills at the company to do that type of game, so we cancelled it. And I think that it was a demonstration to the organisation that focus is going to get rewarded, and that if you can’t after a sustained period of time get to that level of excellence, then we’re going to have to make a change.
“But even then, it was not in a way where it didn’t encourage the risk taking. People had other opportunities to move on to different things -sometimes we do that with an outside developer where it’s going to be less consequential to the company, because it is harder to take a development studio that’s been going in one direction that you own, and move it in a different direction.”
That said, other people at Activision believe True Crime would have scored 80+ had it made it to review stage.
See? Kotick ain’t so bad: he’s willingly sharing his business strategies with others over the interwebs. ‘One best thing’. Remember that, folks.
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Sleeping Dogs
- Platform(s): PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, Xbox One
- Genre(s): Action, Adventure
