Activision Blizzard Chief Executive Officer Bobby Kotick is one of the more infamous people in the gaming industry today. Known for his blunt, painfully honest interviews with the press, Kotick isn’t one to sugarcoat what he wants to say. Earlier this month, he caused uproar among the online gaming community when he suggested that he would have raised game prices even further if it was his call.
Today, those who are hold a grudge for Activision Blizzard and its CEO in particular will likely have another emotion to add to their vendetta: jealousy. Forbes.com revealed Kotick’s total compensation. The world may still be in the grip of a recession, but CEOs for successful companies don’t come cheap even at times like these.
Now, 15 million dollars might sound like a lot of money. But it can’t buy some things, like the 163 foot long Casino Royale themed mega-yacht, which has an asking price of around 38 million USD. Even the most high powered CEOs would have to save up for a couple years to buy that thing.
See kids? Work hard at school and one day you'll be able to afford one of these!
Incidentally, the Casino Royale boasts an impressive top speed of 68 knots, an incredibly fast speed especially when all of the heavy marble and gold decoration inside the ship is taken into account. Silhouettes of Bond girls are etched into the crystal windows to complement the Bond theme.
For that kind of stuff, who wouldn’t want to raise the price of videogames even more? I know I would.
What do you think of Kotick’s impressive salary? Is it obscene that one person is paid so much more than most others, or is it a fundamental aspect of capitalism? Should our society turn away from materialism and towards Marxism? Let us know in our comments section!
Article from Gamersyndrome.com
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I'm a 19 year old university student in my third year of undergraduate school. I live in British Columbia, Canada. Videogames have been a hobby of mine since I played my first games on the Super Nintendo and MS-DOS well over a decade ago. 
its no wonder why he is so smug when it comes to game pricing!
1) the more the game cost the more he makes in bonuses at years end
2) the guy makes a rediculose amount of money so he can afford a price hike
Kotick doesn’t play games apparently, so he wouldn’t care about a price hike even if he wasn’t super rich.
In this case Marxism sounds good
actually a light bled of Marxism ^^
Never liked capitalism. Too stressful and a small pay.
For Kotick it’s not exactly a “small pay” hahah
Like Joedigital says, I can see why he’d have no problems with price hikes. I missed the furore over him saying that originally. Games are way, way too expensive here in the UK.
Also this article was really good by the way, the last paragraph made me lol. Quite unique for a gaming site
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well when your company makes a billion dollars is 15 Million dollars not a justified wage for the man at the helm? I just think he made a mistake by making stupid comments about game prices.. obviously he is to rich for his own good. Kotick come back to reality where the rest of us poor bastards live!
Technically his actual salary is only 900 000 dollars, the 5 million dollar bonus he got was because Activision is such a successful company. If Activision wasn’t highly profitable, he wouldn’t have got a bonus most likely.
Someone who can lead a large company like that and keep it profitable even through a recession like this is definitely worth the millions they pay him.
Yeah, Activision are quite clever, they were somehow able to raise the prices of Modern Warfare 2 and still it’s predicted that more or less everyone that is complaining about the price will buy it anyway…
Heh, if Bungie were to give that plan a shot with Halo 3: ODST, they could put it up quite high.
Bungie, or Microsoft more accurately, already did that with Halo 3 ODST. It was marketed as a 30 dollar expansion, Bungie even said they didn’t view it as a 60 dollar game, and yet guess what Microsoft is selling it for? 60 bucks.
Here in Canada and the United States, Halo 3 ODST and MW2 have the same price tag, and there’s no doubt that MW2 is much better value. ODST is an expansion pack that has a full game price to make MS a few more bucks.
more like how much does gamersyndrome editor Karoken make… Zing!
Its no surprise though, i think activision/blizz is probably alot bigger than we realize.