Activision Prepares for the Holidays

Launching a cool new Web site with media-rich content as part of a Holiday product launch

With just a month to go before the 2007 holiday season, Activision prepared to launch the newest edition of its biggest selling game, “Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock.” After two incredibly successful years with Guitar Hero I and II, Guitar Hero III was expected to be the cornerstone of their holiday season. In planning for the holiday season, Activision decided to make a shift in their marketing strategy. They wanted to use the Internet to help them reach the millions of loyal Guitar Hero fans. The Internet had previously proven to be a very powerful tool for promoting many other Activision games, but they had never used it for such a large or important launch. But, with only a few days remaining before the start of the shopping season, tensions were running high when they realized time was running out and they had not yet tested the new Web site that would carry the Guitar Hero III video promo. What would happen if the site was hit by a large number of users at once? Would the site crash under stress? Would the user experience be compromised and cause prospective buyers to get frustrated and give up trying to view the video that took months to develop?

“We knew that many companies had recently experienced performance issues with their Web sites. Our new site was an important change in our marketing strategy so it was crucial that we measure the capacity and performance to ensure the best user experience possible.” – Niel Armstrong, CIO

The Solution

“We needed help,” said Niel Armstrong, CIO of Activision. “We had very little time and lacked experienced engineers who could test a site so dynamic and of this magnitude.” Activision called upon SOASTA and its SOASTA CloudTest automated testing solution for help. Within two days, one person with limited experience fully tested the new Activision site. Potentially serious technical issues were uncovered within one hour of the SOASTA CloudTest testing process. As a result, many issues were resolved that could have had serious effects on the customer experience. Activision was able to implement the required changes in time to meet their marketing kickoff. A huge amount of potential customers visited their site on the day of the launch and it handled the traffic with great performance. Activision went on to have an incredible holiday season with Guitar Hero III leading the way and named the best selling video game in a single calendar year. Today, Activision uses SOASTA to test its site 7×24, 365 days a year. “There’s no question about it, if we were forced to use traditional testing solutions, we would not have been able to test our site as quickly or as thoroughly as we were able to do with SOASTA CloudTest.”