In the Q&A session during Activision Blizzard's conference call following the release of their CY2009 Q2 Financial Report, Piper Jaffray Analyst Tony Gikas posed a question concerning Activision's pricing amongst their titles with expensive peripherals. While the CEO of Actiblizzard's Publishing Unit Michael Griffith had a reasonable answer to the question, Actiblizzard President and CEO and devil incarnate Bobby Kotick chimed in saying that he would want to raise the game prices even more.

Yeah folks, this is after he told Sony to drop their prices lest Actibilizzard pull their support.

The full transcript of the conference call can be found here.

Tony Gikas - Piper Jaffray

As it relates to shifting Starcraft into 2010, does that mean that we will get two key Blizzard releases next year? And a second question, if you don’t mind, just your comfort level regarding pricing of some of your new games that have some expensive controllers and any feedback that you had from retail as we move through the holidays. Thanks, guys.

Michael Morhaime

While we have not announced the release dates of any of the titles, I will confirm that the move of Starcraft into 2010 does not affect the release schedules of any of our other games.

Michael J. Griffith

And then on the second question, Tony, on the pricing, we’ve had for all of our launch titles in the back half of this year, some of which contain peripherals, as you point out, very strong retailer acceptance and support for all parts of our plan, including our merchandising plans, our marketing programs, and our price points.

Robert A. Kotick

And Tony, you know if it was left to me, I would raise the prices even further.

Akira_EX via seekingalpha.com »