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Technology Stocks : Activision....Returns! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: geoff2k who wrote (1124)	4/20/1998 10:07:00 PM
From: Andrew Fenic	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1992

All the internal developers are leaving? Sounds like a STRONG buy signal to me. A software publisher is just that; a PUBLISHER. They shouldn't waste their time trying to write in-house software. As a publisher they can throw hard cash around and buy the best titles. With in-house people they have to put up with alot of whining and crying and, worst of all, ALOT of bad titles that need to be released prematurely or shelved. Can you imagine if book publishers needed to retain a huge staff of authors at high payrolls just to get, once in a great while, a great novel? Would be wildly impractical.

To: geoff2k who wrote (1124)	4/21/1998 12:04:00 AM
From: Tom Caruthers	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1992

Geoffrey, Let me go on record by saying Scott Miller, frankly, is a...for lack of a better word....DORK. Go to the GTIS thread and read back a month back to some of his ARROGANT and immature posts. Realize that he is at Gathering of Developers, the new company that is trying to steal developers away from the game houses. There is nothing that he would like to do better than stir things up and call attention to his little company. He has taken the Multimedia Wire article out of context... Volume 4, Issue 15 -- April 20, 1998 Activision's Unique Third-Party Relations Land id Software, Other Developers Activision [ATVI] believes it handles third-party development contracts better than other publishers, helping it to secure top-tier out-of-house developers. Wednesday, Activision announced a deal with id Software to distribute worldwide Quake III, now in development. Activision offers the best financial package to third-party developers, says Senior VP of Studios Mitch Lasky, Activision's head of third-party development. Any publisher can make that claim, he admits. The difference, Activision says, is that it helps make developers "stars," like rock musicians. It makes developers available to the media. "Magazines don't want to talk to me," Lasky says, they want to talk to John Carmack. Developers, like id, want to be the stars and build their brands for future development contracts, he says. In addition, Activision allows third-party developers to use its in-house production resources, such as audio and video clips. Activision also begins its PR and marketing machines the day a deal is signed. Its competitors may sign dozens of deals, knowing that many will not pan out, Lasky says. Activision, by contrast, weeds out the unattractive games before signing deals, leaving plenty of PR and marketing dollars to go around. While terms of the deal between Activision and id for Quake III were not disclosed, they were consistent with the terms of the Quake II deal, Lasky says. A release date for Quake III has not been announced, and despite the fact that Activision is publicly traded, it will not pressure id to release the game. Activision will "go the extra mile with id," Lasky adds. (Activision, Mitch Lasky, 310/255-2000) In any case, ATVI has plenty of in-house games....Pitfall, Mechwarrior, I'76, Battlezone, Shanghai, Zork, Apocalypse, Asteroids, etc. Tom