First everyone should read this article http://www.qj.net/qjnet/news/kotick-west-and-zampella-compromised-our-friendship.html. Did everyone get all of that? Yeah crazy huh? I understand business is business. But I assume that if you want to protect your assets and please the shareholders, then you would basically let West and Zampella do the games they want and let them make you the next 50 gzillion dollars. In one of the paragraphs he commented "There was nothing that would have allowed us to retain their services, as talented as they might have been". That goes back to my last point. Stop pushing Call of Duty on them, just like you do with other developers on Tony Hawk and Guitar Hero, and let them choose the games they make. And how can you say they might be talented after they made you so much money?? 
 
Damn. He gets to me sometimes. But, I might be blowing this out of proportion. Who knows. Let me here everyone elses opinions.

Kotick is evil incarnate.

I haven't payed much attention to this, but didn't he terminate West and Zampella without paying them the expected and deserved amount?  Or maybe I've heard wrong.  If it's true and he did give them the boot, while holding onto all the money, that sounds more criminal than professional.

"Letting a studio like IW go on to create a new IP is risky business. "

I hate Activision and mainly Kotick but at the end of the day it is kids that buy 80% of these games that have no idea who Kotick or probably even Inifinty Ward is so the games will continue to sell and Kotick will continue to make a fortune being an ass.

I still don't know which side to believe. If what Activision claims is true, I'm totally with them. But if West and Zampella are telling the truth and that Activision fired them so they wouldn't get paid their bonuses, I'm with them. It's just nuts.

i just wanna see what thesse guys come up in their new studio

From the sound of things all three (Kotick, West, and Zampella) are pricks.  ...Well, they ARE execs so that sorta goes without saying.

I think a lot of people are forgetting something very important:  how many Call of Duty players even know who West and Zampella are?  THEY DON'T!  Out of the 10+ million people out there who bought the game, not even 10% of those people have any goddamn clue who they are.  All they know is that the game says "Call of Duty".  It's even funnier that people latched onto this franchise ONCE IT WENT MODERN.  When it was WWII, no one but hardcore PC gamers seemed to give a fuck.  Even as a launch title on 360, the game wasn't OVERWHELMINGLY popular in sales.  People were still waiting for Halo 3...and still playing the shit out of Halo 2. 
 
I'm not denying that West and Zampella are talented guys, but at the same time, they basically said "hey, let's make a war shooter...but let's add in a bigger level of forward progression and some customization to that".  If you look at Modern Warfare 2, it is LITERALLY the same game as Modern Warfare, except with larger amounts of weaponry, larger amounts of killstreaks, some additional customization, and the titles/icons system from Street Fighter IV!!!  That's it. 
 
Another thing that people need to realize:  IW has ONLY MADE CALL OF DUTY GAMES!  Of COURSE they were fucking good at it.  It's the only thing they needed to make.  Even then, they seemed pretty satisfied for a long time with the idea of simply making CoD games...until one day, West and Zampella got a frog up their ass about Treyarch making World at War.  That was literally the point that shit started - West, Zampella, Bowling...those muthafuckers can't shut up and stop pointing the finger everywhere else for five goddamn minutes.  They KNEW that Treyarch was making the game.  They KNEW that Treyarch was using their tech.  They SAW the checks from those royalties. 
 
People seem to forget - Infinity Ward is OWNED by Activision.  They were a publisher's development house.  When you are a publisher's development house, you develop what they say you develop.  Treyarch is given project after project, and they don't bitch.  Hell, they get shit on all the fucking time, but they do their job and make the game.  If West and Zampella didn't want to have some publisher saying "oh no, you'll be developing this because we own you", then they should've let their fucking contracts run out rather than being tempted by their greed and taking the deal for Modern Warfare 2. 
 
ABOVE ALL ELSE, West and Zampella going behind Activision's back and meeting with EA about a publishing deal was a BAAAAAD idea, especially when they did not have the rights AT ALL to do that. 
 
In short, West and Zampella are the bad guys here, despite the fact that Kotick is the devil incarnate.  People need to pull their heads out of their asses and realize this.  Just because Kotick has proven time and again that he's a fucking asshole, that doesn't mean West and Zampella are saints in any way.  They acting like immature fucking children about all of this rather than seeking independence through legal means.

I do agree about West and Zampella may not be innocent victims but the difference is that Kotick doesn't try to hide his assholeness and never has and for that reason he will always be the bad guy.  If someone walks around punching people in the mouth and laughing and bragging about it and then I sucker punch that person in the mouth and play my cards right I look like the good guy even though I punched the guy when he wasn't looking.  BTW if anybody read my post last weekend mine would be well over 0.1 so if there are any mistakes I apologize.