Activision – Blizzard rehires former CFO with a $15 million signing bonus
While the folks over at Activision have given Blizzard the mandate of cost-cutting wherever they can, have rehired Dennis Durkin, who once served as CFO for the company from 2012-2017 to take over the position once more. Though much of the $15 million is in stock options, this does not look well for a company who are actively offering employees a year’s salary to leave the company, especially with their current stock price falling into the dregs. I know that Activision’s mantra since Kotick joined the company has been “Make more games with less money”, but it is becoming clearer by the day and with each game that it doesn’t work that way. True, nowhere in that mantra does it say the games have to be good, but there’s no way new customers will want to buy a crappy game, and being a Graphic Designer, I know that sometimes creativity takes money to achieve, and hindering creativity is going to work towards longevity in any industry.
WWE Women’s Tag Team title unveiled last night on RAW with the champions being crowned at Elimination Chamber
During last night’s Moment of Bliss, Alexa Bliss revealed the titles to the WWE Universe and announced that teams will vie for the titles during an Elimination Chamber match on February 11th in Houston, TX. Though no teams were announced during the show, there will be three teams from RAW and three teams from Smackdown will compete. I can’t wait to see it, and personally, I hope Sasha Banks and Bayley win the belts.
Sony Pictures hires Dan Trachtenberg to helm the Uncharted movie
Trachtenberg, who was a breakout star with “10 Cloverfield Lane” will be directing the movie, which is based on the video game of the same name. The game follows the story of Nathan Drake, as he journeys the world to find rare artifacts of the ancient world. Though no lead has been announced for the project, many veteran actors had been rumored. I am truly hoping that this movie breaks the running trend of bad video game adaptations. Though I really liked Tomb Raider, it didn’t do well at the theaters.
Just a few thoughts…
- Why does it seem that Blizzard is positioning itself to become a mobile gaming company when ActiBlizzard has King Games under its umbrella? Why are they partnering with NetEase to bring out Diablo Immortal, when they have their own Mobile Games giant in King Games? Is it truly just to bring the game to China? What is going on there?
- Why did it take so long for the WWE to debut it’s newest members to the main roster? To be honest, why did they feel the need to tell people that this was happening so far ahead of schedule? They could have just let them show up, surprising the audience. Though RAW was better than it’s been in months, dare I say years, it felt like 1) as if creative threw up on screen and last night’s RAW is what we got. It felt as if someone with an extremely short attention span was running RAW last night, and 2) they are really worried about AEW Wrestling, and about some of the wrestlers under the WWE moniker jumping ship to the fledgling company. I may be wrong, but it is awfully interesting that nearly one week after the rally for the new promotion, RAW has one of its best shows to date, with a main event finish that fans have been wanting for a long time now.
