Bizarre’s racer Blur was ”not able to break out” either but it did break ”new ground” in terms of features defends Activision; a ”significant investment”.
”Singularity fell short of meeting what is an exceptionally high bar within the shooter genre,” said CFO Thomas Tippl during the Q2 fiscal. ”Fortunately, Call of Duty was the title that raised that bar and shortfall of Singularity was offset by Call of Duty’s catalogue and DLC performance.”
”Additionally, Blur was not able to break out in what turned out to be a relatively soft racing genre despite the number of high-quality releases.” Blur sold only 31k copies in the US in May, but was only on sale for just 5 days. Activision doesn’t regret Blur.
”Importantly, the game broke new ground in creating innovative, social and multiplayer features - including functionality - enables our unique online and back-end platforms that will play an increasing role in driving value in the future,” said Tippl.
”We have made a very significant investment behind the establishment of Blur as a new IP,” he said. ”So I think the marketing plan was very strong, probably stronger than for most of our franchises. Unfortunately, the racing genre was not particularly responsive, at least so far this year, despite the number of good releases.”
”On Singularity, the bar in the shooter genre these days is very high. I think we made the right size investment against this opportunity, and that’s how we expect to continue to look at the amount of marketing support we put behind all of our launches.”
