Even though the rest of us may be salivating over Brutal Legend and the upcoming Ghostbusters game (recently acquired by Atari), it seems Activision Blizzard wasn’t quite as enthusiastic about the two projects when it merged with Vivendi last year. Activision Blizzard said that they prefer instead to work with titles that can be "exploited."

"With respect to the franchises that don’t have the potential to be exploited every year across every platform with clear sequel potential and can meet our objectives of over time becoming $100 million plus franchises," said Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard, "that is a strategy that has worked very well for us."

While they might be making money hand over fist with the strategy of shelling out annual versions of renewable franchises (e.g. Call of Duty, Guitar Hero), we can’t help but wonder what might happen if they took some of that money and invested in new game ideas, much like fellow megapublisher EA has done with Dead Space and Mirror’s Edge. EA makes enough money off of their tried and true performers like Madden NFL that they can experiment with new ideas that could potentially become the next big hit.