Bobby Kotick
CEO, Activision Blizzard. On 1 show, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
Bobby Kotick is the CEO of Activision Blizzard, a Fortune 500 gaming company he formed through a major merger. Under his leadership, the company manages major entertainment franchises including Call of Duty, Candy Crush, Overwatch, and World of Warcraft.
1shows
1appearances
14statements
5resolved
0supported
1contradicted
0%fully supported
Everything Bobby Kotick said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Video games will eventually become as popular as traditional sports
“Video games is the only competitive medium that is going to give me that experience, and that purpose, and that sense of belonging, and that camaraderie that you get from sport. And so of course it's going to be as popular as sport, if not more popular as spor…”
Augmented reality will have more near-term impact than virtual reality
“AR is gonna have more near-term impact than VR.”
Steve Jobs threatened to cancel Apple's contract unless Kotick dropped out
“I will rip, and I can't say the word, I will rip this effing contract up right now if you don't quit college. So I quit the next day.”
Building a WoW competitor internally would have cost $1B and seven years
“And we looked at it and said, if we even could figure out how to do it would take us Five, six, seven years, and a billion dollars, and the likelihood is we wouldn't do a good job of it”
Activision offered up to $7B to buy Blizzard standalone from Vivendi
“And I asked them to sell us Blizzard, and we didn't have any interest in the rest of their games business, but we wanted Blizzard. And they said no repeatedly, and we offered them four billion, and then five billion, and then six billion, and then seven billio…”
Fortnite was the first game where spectating drove viewers to play
“Fortnite, I think, was the first game where people would spectate, and it would actually be a catalyst for them to play.”
Esports will never join the Olympics due to commercial ownership conflicts
“I actually don't think, like, the Olympics has never been about a commercial enterprise, and so if you think of the analog, right, there's not, like, if you had to pick a game, You're now endorsing someone's commercial enterprise.”
Kotick bought a 25% stake in Activision for $440,000 in 1990
“So I bought a 25% stake in Activision for 440,000 dollars, and I became the largest shareholder.”
Activision traded a 51% stake for Blizzard and $2B in cash
“We'll stay a public company, you sell us Blizzard, or give us Blizzard and two billion of cash, and we'll give you 51% of the company.”
Sports succeed primarily due to tribalism and local affiliation
“The reason why sports are so successful is tribalism and that having a local affiliation was so crucial to the success of sport.”
Activision Blizzard players average one hour of daily gameplay
“Video game, our average duration of gameplay, that includes games like Candy Crush, is an hour per person per day. Games like Call of Duty or World of Warcraft are hours a day.”
Kotick built an Apple II GUI suite a year before Mac launched
“So we designed this mouse and a word processor and a spreadsheet and a database All for the Apple II with a graphical user interface about a year before the Macintosh was released.”
Activision Blizzard serves 400 million customers across 196 countries
“Today, we sell in a 196 countries around the world. We have four hundred million customers and anyone in any socioeconomic strata can actually play games.”
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Bobby's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 a16zLEDGER | CEO, Activision Blizzard | 1 | 14 | 0% 0/5 | full record on the a16z Podcast → |