Rod Fergusson Joins Blizzard 

Not everything was great in the world of Blizzard this week but we might get into that later. The great news for Blizzard this week is that longtime industry veteran, Rod Ferguson will be joining the company. Rod Fergusson who is best known for his work on the Gears of War franchise, most notable has been leading the studio in Vancouver since it became the Coalition. In 2014, Microsoft acquired the Gears of War IP from Epic games who weren’t the Fortnite machine that they are today and along with the purchase of the new license they also hired Rod Fergusson to oversee as lead on the franchise. Fergusson served as the executive producer on the first three games while at Epic, which made sense as to why Microsoft chose him to lead, at the time, one of their prized exclusives. Unfortunately, his time with the studio has come to an end as he will now move forward with the next chapter in his career. 

Fergusson took to Twitter to officially announce his next move in the gaming industry. “Starting in March, I will join Blizzard to oversee the Diablo franchise. Leaving is bittersweet as I love our Gears family, the fans, and everyone at The Coalition and Xbox. Thank you, it has been an honor and a privilege to work with you all. I began working on Gears of War over 15 years ago and since then, it has been the joy of my life. But now it’s time for a new adventure. I leave Gears in the great hands of The Coalition and can’t wait for everyone to play Gears Tactics on April 28” 

With this move comes a lot of questions for the future of both the Diablo franchise and the Gears franchise. For the future of Diablo, I do find it interesting that Blizzard has chosen someone to lead the series who in his history doesn’t have a whole lot of experience with a game of this style that will be ever evolving with constant updates like Diablo 3. I also find it interesting that they chose to hire from without rather than from within but I guess you have to hire the best talent for the job. 

The way he worded his announcement, by choosing the words oversee the Diablo series rather than specifically saying Diablo 4 makes me think that Blizzard has brought Fergusson on board to try to expand the universe as much as possible similar to Gears of War has attempted over the past couple years. Gears Pop didn’t set the world on fire and the level of anticipation for Gears Tactics seems low but it’s hard for a game to hit the ground running. I think these games are laying a good foundation for the future of the series. They also take some of the pressure of the mainline game being a smash success every time. Microsoft, without a doubt paid a lot for the IP and it’s smart to figure out how to get more out of it. These new experiences might not be commercially successful from the start, they do offer a fresh experience using an already existing IP.

Blizzard, and probably more specificly Activision would like to be capitalizing on the rich IP that is Diablo more than once every 10 years or so. If you think about the deep lore that Diablo has produced since 1997 the opportunity for new experiences is ripe for the picking. There are infinite amounts of genres that this game could branch out to and I’m sure the hope from Activision is that Rod Fergusson and his experience will help. 

The other question is where is the Gears of War franchise now that it’s studio head since 2014 has departed. Christopher Dring on Games Industry dot biz had a great interview with Matt Booty, head of Microsoft Studios, where he talked about the stable position the series is in, as well as the future of the series 

“Gears 5 represents a world class studio that is at the peak of what they can produce. It was one of the biggest games we've launched at Xbox Game Studios. We had three million players in the game during its opening weekend. So we're really happy with how that landed. It received game of the year nominations and accolades for some of its accessibility and diversity work that was in the game... all of that represents what the studio is capable of, the team that we built there”

It’s clear with how Microsoft has been behaving this generation they are viewing things differently from traditional metrics. It’s no longer about day one game sales and consoles sold. Instead it’s about people in their ecosystem and these numbers they aren’t sharing publicly. Between no longer disclosing console sales to this week Phil Spencer saying in an interview with Protocol who their competitors are  “When you talk about Nintendo and Sony, we have a ton of respect for them, but we see Amazon and Google as the main competitors going forward,”

I think this is great news for Microsoft, The Coalition, Blizzard and Gamers. I am excited to hopefully see the Diablo universe expand and be able to play more new experiences. As a fan of XCom, and turn based tactics games I am also looking forward to seeing what new experience Gears Tactics can bring to this IP this spring. 

Ubisoft Q3 earnings 

On Thursday, Ubisoft disclosed their earnings report for Q3, which like the majority of public companies ran from the start of October to the end of December 2019. With a lack of major releases, not only in Q3 but throughout the whole fiscal year 2020, sales have been down vs years prior when games actually were released. During the whole fiscal year up until right now the only games that Ubisoft have released include Ghost Recon: Breakpoint and Just Dance 2020. Just Dance obviously sells well enough each year or they wouldn’t keep making it annually but it’s not keeping the Ubisoft portfolio afloat and it’s not a traditional live service game that Ubisoft has been trying to perfect this generation. Ghost Recon, on the other hand had a myriad of complaints and issues from fans when it was released and subsequently didn’t sell to their expectations. Ubisoft, acknowledged these concerns and issued a statement regarding how the team plans to fix it with a road map. 

The strength of Ubisofts Q3 is largely based on the back catalog, which most likely means any game not released in FY2020. Back catalog sales accounted for 764 million euros in Q3 or almost 70 percent of their total earnings for the quarter.  

Yves Guillemot, CEO  said in a press release “Although the current fiscal year is well below our initial expectations, the third fiscal quarter saw excellent performances from several titles in our back catalog – particularly Rainbow Six Siege, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, The Crew 2 and Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle – and from the release of Just Dance 2020, which is back on the growth track”

Although things don’t look great for Ubisoft this quarter they did make the conscious decision to delay many games outside of this quarter and out of the fiscal year. Gods and Monsters, Rainbow Six Quarantine and Watch Dogs Legion all received indefinite delays.  Ubisoft has always been at the forefront of new console releases and possibly delayed all for these games to coincide with the next gen launch. The other reason could have been that they were seeing some of the backlash the company got when it released a game like Breakpoint that was under developed and not fully fleshed out. 

Looking for the rest of FY2020 the company will most likely be depending on their back catalog to continue to generate sales. However, looking further FY2021 will likely see the release of many new games with at least five of them being AAA. Yves Guillemot elaborated further “We have evolved our organizational structure in recent months in order to strengthen our focus on high-potential titles, and we are very excited about the idea of releasing five new AAA games in 2020-21. Although the competitive environment is looking especially tough, production of these games is progressing well and each of them comes with great features that set them apart”

He also went on to say that roller champions, the roller derby game that was leaked prior to E3 2019 will also be released but was not included in the list of the five AAA. It’s safe to assume that the three delayed games will be considered part of the bunch. The big question is what will the remaining two games be?  It’s safe to assume that after a year off, the Assassins Creed franchise will make a return, with rumors being that it will be viking related. I’m sure we will most likely hear news regarding these game’s and their releases either at E3 or at their FY2020 annual report which will most likely take place around the same time it did last year, which was middle of May. 

TTWO

Keeping with publicly traded video game company news, this we got a fair amount of information from TTWO. Not only did they release their Q3 FY2020 earnings report but a couple days prior they announced that co founder of Rock Star would be stepping down. Announced in a SEC filings document, rather than an official announcement or press release the company announced that Dan Houser would be leaving the company. Its somewhat strange that this was the direction the company took for someone who has been with TTWO since 1998 when it acquired as BMG games, which then evolved and created Rockstar Games

The official wording on the SEC Filing said  “After an extended break beginning in the spring of 2019, Dan Houser, Vice President, Creative at Rockstar Games, will be leaving the company. Dan Houser’s last day will be March 11, 2020. We are extremely grateful for his contributions. Rockstar Games has built some of the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful game worlds, a global community of passionate fans and an incredibly talented team, which remains focused on current and future projects”

Rockstar has always kept its inner workings fairly private. As it seems that Houser has been on an extended break since spring of 2019 for a number of possibilities. The most likely of them all was that Red Dead Redemption 2 shipped late 2018 and as one of the main writers for the narrative heavy game, the team was probably burnt out. 

In an article from The New York Magazine, which was released just prior to RDR2, Dan Houser said “We were working 100-hour week several times in 2018. The finished game includes 300,000 animations, 500,000 lines of dialogue, and many more lines of code. Even for each RDR2 trailer and TV commercial, we probably made 70 versions”

The games that Rockstar creates are unique as they are massive open world with rich narrative and are always pushing the envelope. The envelope of what’s politically correct or the technology envelope or the gaming medium as a whole. This is the reason that these games take upwards of seven years or longer to complete and the likely reason we have only seen one new Rockstar launch this generation. 

As a result of Dan Housers departure announcement the company’s stock price dropped almost 5 percent that day. It rebounded over the next two days leading up to the earnings call where good things were expected. Unfortunately upon missed expectations combined with the recent news the stock went back into free fall as it plunged around 15 percent from its opening this week at 127 to its closing this week of 112. To put this in perspective the amount of value this company lost this week was around 131 million, which is low when compared to the value of the company being north of 13 billion. 

The big question is how do things look going forward for TTWO with a seemingly major cornerstone of RockStar Games departing. Strauss Zelnick, CEO of TTWO seems to have a very optimistic outlook “ Take-Two’s development pipeline over the coming years is the largest and most diverse in our history, including releases from our largest franchises, new IP and a broad mix of gameplay experiences, all designed to captivate and engage audiences well beyond initial release”