Kotick irritated by Xbox Live

This is starting to become a bit of a habit. Activision boss Bobby Kotick has decided to flex his corporate biceps once again by claiming that if the games industry wants to move forward it needs to break free of the shackles imposed upon it by console platform holders.

Or in other words, why should punters pay Microsoft for the privilege of playing Activision’s games online?

We’ve heard that 60 per cent of Microsoft’s subscribers are principally on Live because of Call of Duty,” Kotick told The Financial Times. We don’t really participate financially in that income stream. We would really like to be able to provide much more value to those millions of players playing on Live, but it’s not our network.

We have always been platform agnostic. Consoles do a very good job of supporting the gamer. If we are going to broaden our audiences, we are going to need to have other devices.”

He added that the publisher will very aggressively” support efforts from companies such as Dell and HP to increase the connectivity enjoyed between PC and TVs. He’s also previously hinted that he’d like to distance the Guitar Hero brand from consoles.

It’s not the first time Kotick has expressed his irritation at his inability to further monetise the online element of Call of Duty beyond the release of DLC map packs. He told The Wall Street Journal last month that if he could have one wish it would be an online subscription service for Call of Duty.

But the exec’s lust for power reaches beyond simply Call of Duty.

Just over a year ago. Kotick rocked the world of console gaming by stating that Activision would be prepared to drop the PS3 platform if Sony did not drop the price of PS3. A few months later Sony announced the cut-price PS3 Slim.