14 DAY TRIAL // Activision is probably entering the best period of its existence. Call of Duty 4 is one of the most important first person shooters on the market, still selling strong more than six months after launch. Guitar Hero is poised to evolve to the next level with the eminent release of World Tour, which brings the experience of playing a full band to the game and the Blizzard merger has just gone through, bringing a very successful MMO to the games portfolio of Activision.
Bobby Kotick, the Chief Executive Officer of the newly founded company, is now talking about the big plans it has regarding the future. His firm has a lot of cash to spend because of the original plan to fund a tender offer for Blizzard; it means that a big project might get a lot of money.
Is it a direct competitor to Apple's iTunes big project? Kotick seems to think so. Talking to the Wall Street Journal, the CEO said that Guitar Hero, a game which already gets all of its new content via a digital download platform, is in a unique position to challenge the Steve Jobs imagined music distribution service. Kotick said that "I don't think there have been a lot of credible alternatives to iTunes but Guitar Hero certainly has that potential".
He pointed out to the fact that there are more than 20 million copies of Guitar Hero sold all over the world, which results in a huge potential customer base and also thinks that the people who play Guitar Hero are tech savvy enough to respond well to a music download service which not only delivers the music track, but also allows you to import the song into Guitar Hero and play it.
Activision could have another ace up its sleeve when it comes to distributing music. The company is rumored to be in talks with representatives of The Beatles to bring the band's back catalog to Guitar Hero. At the moment, The Beatles have refused to allow their music on iTunes.