Activision Likely to Sell Game Cutscene Movies

Not strictly RPG news but certainly a bit of industry news worth discussing for a readerbase used to plenty of cutscenes. Activision CEO Bobby Kotick has commented to IGN on the idea of selling cutscenes as movies.

Speaking today at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Media, Communications & Entertainment Conference in California, Kotick said StarCraft II’s in-game cinematics are so good that the publisher could edit them into one film and distribute it to fans digitally, a move, he said, is likely to happen sometime in the next five years.

“If we were to take that hour, or hour an a half, and take it out of the game and we were to go to our audiences, who we have their credit card information a direct relationship, and say to them ‘Would you like to have the StarCraft movie?’

Kotick continued to say he believes his business model is superior to that of current film studios, saying a StarCraft movie distributed by the publisher would crush any opening weekend box office record ever.

Activision makes some sweet cutscenes so it’s not a horrible idea, however the way he describes it, it sounds like he expects people to pay 20 bucks for a group of cutscenes that – by owning the game – we already own.

So, neat idea or are we looking at yet another attempt from the gaming industry to blatantly rip us off?