Kotick frustrated at existing Xbox Live business model

Activision CEO Bobby Kotick would like to break the walled gardens of online console services like Xbox Live.

The executive told the Financial Times he’s frustrated by existing business models that see companies like Microsoft benefiting most from the success of online third party content, such as that released for Activision’s Call of Duty series.

Gamers racked up 1.7 billon hours of Call Of Duty online play between November 2009 and April 2010. While Activision has profited from phenomenal Call Of Duty retail sales – the most recent series release, Modern Warfare 2, has now cleared 20 million sales - and made money from record breaking downloadable content, the company wants a bigger piece of the pie.

“We’ve heard that 60 per cent of [Microsoft’s] subscribers are principally on Live because of Call Of Duty,” Kotick said. “We don’t really participate financially in that income stream. We would really like to be able to provide much more value to those millions of players playing on Live, but it’s not our network.”

Kotick said new game machines will be needed for publishers to better monetise online game play.

“We have always been platform agnostic. [Consoles] do a very good job of supporting the gamer. If we are going to broaden our audiences, we are going to need to have other devices.” Kotick said Activision will “very aggressively” support moves by Dell and HP to connect PCs to TVs.

Kotick said previously that consumers are “clamouring” for an online, subscription-based Call Of Duty service and that he’d love to launch one if possible.

His latest comments echo those of Square Enix CEO Yoichi Wada, who said recently: “The true battlefield is the respective network services that support consoles… First and foremost I would like them to come up with a network infrastructure that will allow the publishers like us to freely design different business schemes. For the publishers the advantage of the networks is that it allows more types of diversified revenue models and I don't want their networks to interfere with that."

Thanks, EDGE.