In a surprise move last week, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority moved to dam Activision Blizzard’s $68.7 billion merger with Microsoft. Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick – whose company is behind blockbusters like Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, and Candy Crush – declined to comment on the merger’s future specifically. But Kotick did share his thoughts on the longer term of the gaming industry and the way excessive regulation is curtailing innovation.
Lydia: What keeps you up at night? What are your biggest concerns for the industry?
Bobby: The best threat to Western innovation is government regulation, primarily from the UK and the US. The regulators charged with the responsibility of protecting consumers, and inspiring competition are literally the best obstacles to competition. Europe has at all times had a vibrant gaming economy and within the last decade we have now seen enormous talent throughout Europe. Countries like Poland, Romania, Ukraine have now joined Germany, France and Spain as leaders in gaming innovation and development. We’re seeing Middle Eastern and even North African countries beginning to exhibit innovation and embrace opportunities to develop local gaming industries.
My biggest fear is that an industry that was invented in the US by Atari within the Nineteen Seventies could find itself like so many other over regulated industries — an innovation laggard — due to regulatory burdens from governments that don’t have the willingness to take a position in understanding the industries they try to control. From cures for cancer; to games that connect people through joy, fun and a way of accomplishment, an entire host of industries invented in the US could disappear if we don’t fix our K-12 education system and elect government officials who embrace capitalism and the entrepreneurial spirit which is the inspiration for what has enabled America’s success.
Lydia: How essential is AI to the gaming industry?
Bobby: Because China’s K-12 education system is superior to US and most Western education systems, there are more math and science students graduating in China with advanced skills as in comparison with anywhere else on the earth. In 10 years there’ll likely be more exceptional AI and Machine Learning programmers in China than anywhere else. I believe it will end in the perfect game firms continuing to be Chinese. What impresses me most about Chinese games is how modern and inventive they’ve change into. That combined with great long run vision, speed of execution and exceptional management has propelled the Chinese game firms into the most important global competitors on the earth.
Lydia: The video game, TV, film and social-media industries are all investing billions into their products and humans still only have 24 hours a day. Once you read that a 3rd of all Americans are on TikTok and that they’re on it a mean of three hours a day, are you concerned concerning the impact on your online business?
Bobby: For the reason that introduction of the Atari 2600 in 1977 there has at all times been speculation about whether video games would ever be greater than a passing fad. Today, the worldwide marketplace for video games is approaching $200 billion, larger than movies and growing faster than television. It’s an incredibly fragmented market but 3 billion people all over the world now play games.
Lydia: Analysts have been forecasting the death of gaming consoles that hook up with TVs for over a decade, when will games be simply over broadband or do you’re thinking that consumers can have to proceed to purchase next-generation boxes for years to come back?
Bobby: Over the past decade games became mainstream media due to mobile phones. Dedicated game consoles like Xbox and the market dominant Ps are expensive and are largely successful in developed countries with middle class consumers. I feel there’ll at all times be a job for top end dedicated game consoles to offer premium game experiences for well-to-do gamers.
Lydia: How have mobile phones upended gaming?
Bobby: The democratization of gaming was driven by phones and the marketplace for gaming will largely proceed to be driven by mobile games. Apple and Google are the leading game firms for phones. The computing power of phones is improving at a blazing fast pace and our view is that games will largely be played on phones for the following decade or longer.
There have been lots of investments in game streaming. I feel Amazon has the most important variety of game streaming customers on the earth through its Luna game service which is free with Prime. Netflix has entered game streaming, Google entered and exited game streaming as they realized it was actually less efficient to offer processing power within the cloud than on Android phones. Firms will proceed to take a position in so-called “cloud gaming” but this isn’t really a market. There’s storage within the cloud, there’s broadband for supporting downloading of content and multiplayer play, and there are efforts to supply “processing” within the cloud which up to now haven’t proven to achieve success.
Lydia: Will enough people actually pay for high-end immersive experiences? Is there still innovation in that space?
Bobby: Fortunately, there continues to be some hardware innovation happening within the US. Meta is leading the event of Virtual Reality based gaming which can create entirely latest immersive experiences for gamers. And the chips that power phones for gaming are largely still designed in the US.
In a surprise move last week, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority moved to dam Activision Blizzard’s $68.7 billion merger with Microsoft. Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick – whose company is behind blockbusters like Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, and Candy Crush – declined to comment on the merger’s future specifically. But Kotick did share his thoughts on the longer term of the gaming industry and the way excessive regulation is curtailing innovation.
Lydia: What keeps you up at night? What are your biggest concerns for the industry?
Bobby: The best threat to Western innovation is government regulation, primarily from the UK and the US. The regulators charged with the responsibility of protecting consumers, and inspiring competition are literally the best obstacles to competition. Europe has at all times had a vibrant gaming economy and within the last decade we have now seen enormous talent throughout Europe. Countries like Poland, Romania, Ukraine have now joined Germany, France and Spain as leaders in gaming innovation and development. We’re seeing Middle Eastern and even North African countries beginning to exhibit innovation and embrace opportunities to develop local gaming industries.
My biggest fear is that an industry that was invented in the US by Atari within the Nineteen Seventies could find itself like so many other over regulated industries — an innovation laggard — due to regulatory burdens from governments that don’t have the willingness to take a position in understanding the industries they try to control. From cures for cancer; to games that connect people through joy, fun and a way of accomplishment, an entire host of industries invented in the US could disappear if we don’t fix our K-12 education system and elect government officials who embrace capitalism and the entrepreneurial spirit which is the inspiration for what has enabled America’s success.
Lydia: How essential is AI to the gaming industry?
Bobby: Because China’s K-12 education system is superior to US and most Western education systems, there are more math and science students graduating in China with advanced skills as in comparison with anywhere else on the earth. In 10 years there’ll likely be more exceptional AI and Machine Learning programmers in China than anywhere else. I believe it will end in the perfect game firms continuing to be Chinese. What impresses me most about Chinese games is how modern and inventive they’ve change into. That combined with great long run vision, speed of execution and exceptional management has propelled the Chinese game firms into the most important global competitors on the earth.
Lydia: The video game, TV, film and social-media industries are all investing billions into their products and humans still only have 24 hours a day. Once you read that a 3rd of all Americans are on TikTok and that they’re on it a mean of three hours a day, are you concerned concerning the impact on your online business?
Bobby: For the reason that introduction of the Atari 2600 in 1977 there has at all times been speculation about whether video games would ever be greater than a passing fad. Today, the worldwide marketplace for video games is approaching $200 billion, larger than movies and growing faster than television. It’s an incredibly fragmented market but 3 billion people all over the world now play games.
Lydia: Analysts have been forecasting the death of gaming consoles that hook up with TVs for over a decade, when will games be simply over broadband or do you’re thinking that consumers can have to proceed to purchase next-generation boxes for years to come back?
Bobby: Over the past decade games became mainstream media due to mobile phones. Dedicated game consoles like Xbox and the market dominant Ps are expensive and are largely successful in developed countries with middle class consumers. I feel there’ll at all times be a job for top end dedicated game consoles to offer premium game experiences for well-to-do gamers.
Lydia: How have mobile phones upended gaming?
Bobby: The democratization of gaming was driven by phones and the marketplace for gaming will largely proceed to be driven by mobile games. Apple and Google are the leading game firms for phones. The computing power of phones is improving at a blazing fast pace and our view is that games will largely be played on phones for the following decade or longer.
There have been lots of investments in game streaming. I feel Amazon has the most important variety of game streaming customers on the earth through its Luna game service which is free with Prime. Netflix has entered game streaming, Google entered and exited game streaming as they realized it was actually less efficient to offer processing power within the cloud than on Android phones. Firms will proceed to take a position in so-called “cloud gaming” but this isn’t really a market. There’s storage within the cloud, there’s broadband for supporting downloading of content and multiplayer play, and there are efforts to supply “processing” within the cloud which up to now haven’t proven to achieve success.
Lydia: Will enough people actually pay for high-end immersive experiences? Is there still innovation in that space?
Bobby: Fortunately, there continues to be some hardware innovation happening within the US. Meta is leading the event of Virtual Reality based gaming which can create entirely latest immersive experiences for gamers. And the chips that power phones for gaming are largely still designed in the US.
