Activision CEO Says Guitar Hero & Skylanders Could Return On Xbox

Remember when Activision Blizzard made games that weren't Call of Duty? Look, we know we're exaggerating, but seriously, the publisher's output was once a lot more varied than in recent years. That output included the likes of Guitar Hero and Skylanders, which Activision Blizzard's CEO seems to think could return.

In an interview with Venture Beat, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick spoke about future opportunities under Xbox's leadership. Kotick went on to talk about Guitar Hero and Skylanders, and how supply chain logistics got in the way of the company producing more of these types of games.

"You look at all the opportunities that we get with a company like Microsoft. I’ll give you one great example. Phil and I started riffing on things for the future. I’ll give you three that are really compelling. I wanted to make a new Guitar Hero for a while, but I don’t want to add teams to do manufacturing and supply chain and QA for manufacturing. And the chip shortages are enormous."

Kotick also took the opportunity to take a dig at the competition, classy! The CEO expressed his displeasure at "crappy alternatives" to Skylanders, which he claims flooded the market.

"I had a really cool vision for what the next Guitar Hero would be, and realized we don’t have the resources to do that. And Skylanders too. One of the great disappointments of my career is that other people came in and they came out with crappy alternatives. And they dumped all of these crappy alternatives in the market, and basically destroyed the market for what was a really cool future opportunity.

If you look at Skylanders, with its hardware and manufacturing and supply chain, there are the same kinds of things that we can’t do but Microsoft can."

That could well be free market competition, but what the hell do we know? Anyway, it'd be cool to see Microsoft give these another shot, particularly Guitar Hero, which we think deserves to live on.

Would you like to see Guitar Hero or Skylanders return? Let us know below.

[source venturebeat.com]