His limitations are he's in the wrong business.

An effective CEO has at least a theoretical understanding of what the various employees in his company do, that while they may not know how to program they at least know what programming entails.

To not use the products your company produces is arrogance if not idiocy. How can you lead except by numbers in that situation?

Remember when the CEO of Motorola got their email printed out by their secretary? Ignorance like that reduced them from the dominant force in the industry to a pet of Google.

In fairness to Bobby Kotick, he took Activision from a small publisher filing for Chapter 11 to one of the biggest companies in the business -- and arguably, one of the companies largely responsible for the mainstreaming and explosive growth of the industry.

He may not be a gamer, and he may receive a lot of flak for his brazen "I just crank out IP; I'm not trying to make art" attitude. But as a CEO, it's hard to argue with his track record over the last 20+ years. As to whether he's qualified to lead Activision in the post-mobile world, well, that remains to be seen. Innovator's Dilemma.

I'm sure it was really hard to make money while milking Call of Duty, Guitar Hero, and the various Blizzard properties for all they're worth.

The biggest threat is that they'll run out of franchises to ruin.

He's been there since the early 1990s, and the first CoD, Guitar Hero, etc., properties came out under his watch. As to milking them as franchises -- hey, from a business standpoint, it's been printing insane amounts of cash. It's not creatively satisfying, and I'm not defending it as the height of entrepreneurial adventurism or innovation. But he found and perfected what became the definitive business model for the industry. Regardless of what you think of his practices, he's been successful.

What I mean by all this is it seems Bobby Kotick could hardly care if he's running a multi-national pizza franchise, a music label, or a construction conglomerate. He's just a numbers guy.

It's really hard to tell if someone like Kotick is running the business in a sustainable fashion, or if he's just beating all the value out of the company, getting in a good run, and then dumps the company in someone else's lap when it's exhausted.

It's a vital skill IMO- what CEO is going to be good at everything? They aren't gods.

You don't need to be good but, IMHO, you have to know WTF are you doing.

E.g. movie studios CEO might suck at writing, acting and never know which end of a camera shoots but, unlike their game industry colleagues, the do watch movies.

Steve Ballmer might be an awful coder and would not know how reinstall Windows from an OEM disk but, I have no doubt, he uses Windows and other MS products every day.

Elon Musk might not know how to change a tire or adjust wheel alignment, but he does drive cars.

The video game industry is really standing out with the most management, not just C*Os, having absolutely no idea what are the products their minions are producing.

Ah, the idea of the generic CEO or other executive that can manage anything, which I have said is a myth before.

How does anything said there contradict that?

That's several examples of CEOs that are obviously at least superficially familiar with the products their respective companies make.

It don't, I just wanted to mention that.

It's a vital skill in any supervisory or managerial job. Especially so as you get higher up the pyramid, it's important to remember you need a lot of secure blocks below you so things don't collapse.

Do you really want a university educated, never used a tool to make a living in his life, deciding he gets to dictate how to frame, roof and side your new house, maybe use less nails to cut down on costs? Is that a company you want to invest in?

I work in construction, my boss climbed to the top but he still only gives suggestions on how to do things because it's been over 20 years since he's actually done it. Our tools aren't dictated to us, our set ups aren't. We do our job, he does his.

For a company producing games your executives don't need to be the creative brains or anything of the sort, they've got tons of that below them. They've got entire departments of artists, developers, writers, etc. Why the hell would anybody think its financially prudent to get the CEO in on what would be a good story when you've got a career writer, or what cinematography style you should use when you've got artists on staff.

You want the management to be coordinating all the little guys so that everyone hits the goal posts and finish lines at the right times and make those judgement calls to either delay the project or drop something to make the deadline.

To sum it up I would say:

People who manage game developers don't necessarily need to be good at developing games- they need to be good at managing people who develop games, which is related but not the same.

A CEO, especially at a larger company, does more than manage people. They influence the strategic direction of the company, and act as both public face and rolemodel.

While it's /possible/ for a CEO influence effective strategy without using or thoroughly understanding their product, it does not exactly inspire confidence.