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This excerpt taken from the ATVI 10-K filed Jun 9, 2005. We depend on skilled personnel.
Our success depends to a significant extent on our ability to identify, hire and retain skilled personnel. The software industry is characterized by a high level of employee mobility and aggressive recruiting among competitors for personnel with technical, marketing, sales, product development and management skills. We may not be able to attract and retain skilled personnel or may incur significant costs in order to do so. If we are unable to attract additional qualified employees or retain the services of key personnel, our business and financial results could be negatively impacted.
Our platform licensors are our chief competitors and frequently control the manufacturing of and have broad approval rights over our video game products.
Generally, when we develop interactive entertainment software products for hardware platforms offered by Sony, Nintendo or Microsoft, the products are manufactured exclusively by that hardware manufacturer or their approved replicator.
Our agreements with these manufacturers include certain provisions, such as approval rights over all products and related promotional materials and the ability to change the fee they charge for the manufacturing of products, that allow them substantial influence over our costs and the release schedule of our products. In addition, since each of the manufacturers is also a publisher of games for its own hardware platforms and manufactures products for all of its
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other licensees, a manufacturer may give priority to its own products or those of our competitors in the event of insufficient manufacturing capacity. Accordingly, Sony, Nintendo or Microsoft could cause unanticipated delays in the release of our products as well as increases to our development, manufacturing, marketing or distribution costs, which could materially harm our business and financial results.
In addition, as online capabilities for video game platforms emerge, our platform licensors will control our ability to provide online game capabilities for our console platform products and will in large part establish the financial terms on which these services are offered to consumers. Currently, both Microsoft and Sony provide online capabilities for Xbox and PS2 products, respectively. In each case, compatibility code and the consent of the licensor are required for us to include online capabilities in our products. In addition, the business model for Microsoft’s and Sony’s online businesses for their video game products may compete with our online business. As these capabilities become more significant, the failure or refusal of our licensors to approve our products, or the successful deployment by these licensors of services competitive to ours, may harm our business.
Our platform licensors set the royalty rates and other fees that we must pay to publish games for their platforms, and therefore have significant influence on our costs.
We pay a licensing fee to the hardware manufacturer for each copy of a product manufactured for that manufacturer’s game platform. In the next year, we expect our platform licensors to introduce new hardware platforms into the market. In order to publish products for new hardware platforms, we must take a license from the platform licensor which gives the platform licensor the opportunity to set the fee structure that we must pay in order to publish games for that platform. Similarly, the platform licensors have retained the flexibility to change their fee structures for online gameplay and features for their consoles and the manufacturing of products. The control that platform licensors have over the fee structures for their future platforms and online access makes it difficult for us to predict our costs and profitability in the medium to long term. Because publishing products for console systems is the largest portion of our business, any increase in fee structures would have a significant negative impact on our business model and profitability.
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