From working in large companies there are a few things, 1: marketing is easy to spend on and always gets results (or vague results that appear to be helping) vs product development is expensive and doesn’t always work out with a lot of sunk cost risk
2: people that run marketing tend to be very personable as they are sales people. They tend to do a better job selling to leadership that they need more budget. 3: marketing is easily hired out to 3rd party contractors who can do the whole marketing plan for you without much employee involvement. Whereas product development requires you to be really effective at running your company, team cohesion, vision, etc.
In the case of Activision, it seems they have been challenged with development for years now so they doubled down on the part that was easy for them to execute, as they struggled to retain talent and develop product.
From working in large companies there are a few things, 1: marketing is easy to spend on and always gets results (or vague results that appear to be helping) vs product development is expensive and doesn’t always work out with a lot of sunk cost risk 2: people that run marketing tend to be very personable as they are sales people. They tend to do a better job selling to leadership that they need more budget. 3: marketing is easily hired out to 3rd party contractors who can do the whole marketing plan for you without much employee involvement. Whereas product development requires you to be really effective at running your company, team cohesion, vision, etc.
In the case of Activision, it seems they have been challenged with development for years now so they doubled down on the part that was easy for them to execute, as they struggled to retain talent and develop product.