Bizarre Creations set to close

[abigsmurf]

200 employees, one of the biggest and best British studios.

If this was a manufacturing place, there'd already be some politician on the TV saying it's an outrage.

Time to avoid buying Activision titles. Screw them. They're a worse company than EA ever were at their worst.

[fishbowlhead]

200 employees, one of the biggest and best British studios.

If this was a manufacturing place, there'd already be some politician on the TV saying it's an outrage.

Time to avoid buying Activision titles. Screw them. They're a worse company than EA ever were at their worst.

200? i had no idea it was that many people, what were the reasons for the shut down before i burn activision to the ground?

[abigsmurf]

Blur and Bloodstone underperforming.

[MikeRox]

RE Sega buying and doing MSR 2 oooh that would be awesome, as it could easily be multiformat too

Activision seem to be goin thru a similar cycle to EA in the last 90s with regards to buying developers, not being happy with their results and decimating/shuttering them. I think they're the 3rd or 4th Activision owned studio this year to be shut/suffer significant redundancies and there were a fair few last year too.

[MikeRox]

Why did Activision buy them in the first place? For only to close them down. What happens with geometry wars. Hopefully Microsoft bail them out as PGR 5 needs to be made by a decent developer.

They wanted a foot hold in the racing genre (like Ubisoft are trying to get with Driver).

Some people have suggested this might also be due to the coalition's decision to axe the tax break for game developers.

[Prototype]

They wanted a foot hold in the racing genre (like Ubisoft are trying to get with Driver).

Some people have suggested this might also be due to the coalition's decision to axe the tax break for game developers.

Yeah, but I don't think Blur was the type of game Bizarre would make. Plus the marketing of Blur wasn't that great.

As for Bloodstones marketing? What marketing? There was none. And plus why would they release a Bond game when there is no Bond film out? And four days ahead of the biggest release of the year Call of Duty, which is their own game. It's almost like if they wanted an excuse for Bizarre to fail.

[saturn-gamer]

If it weren't for Blizzard and CoD, I figure Activision would be in huge trouble. What, outside of those few games, didn't bomb?

EA games are not always a huge success either, but they believe in their products. Thats why we'll see Dead Space 2 even though DS1 initially underperformed. I think they'll reap their rewards with sequels like DS2 and thus have a new franchise for years to come while Kotick doesn't care about such continuity at all. They try once, if it underperforms, they'll kill it. Whats strange though is that they didn't abandon the awful skate board device and keep on making a fool out of Tony Hawk. But perhaps Ride left them with a huge stock of those things.

[EvilBoris]

I bet Bungie are prepping for a hundred press questions along the lines of 'Are you concerned that...'

I suppose bungie aren't owned by actibliz and I'd imagine that having flown the coup from MS ( and MS bring happy t let them go) that Bungie have got some uber flexible contract in place.

In recent years BC have produced a series of commercial failures, despite many of the games being critically praised

[Team Andromeda]

If MS had any sense they would come in and snap them up, like they should have done in the 1st place and we would have all be getting ready to play PGR 5 next year.

Then again this is MS they rather waste millions on crap like Natal

[Number45]

On a positive note, their next game being published by someone other than Activision greatly increases the chances of me picking it up. Unless it's Microsoft, obviously.

[Prototype]

If MS had any sense they would come in and snap them up, like they should have done in the 1st place and we would have all be getting ready to play PGR 5 next year.

Then again this is MS they rather waste millions on crap like Natal

[fuse]

Geometry Wars 3 noooooooooooooooooo

[EvilBoris]

Activision will still own the IP no doubt and I'm sure MS have some control over it too, so it may well make a return. I don't think you'd need to be bizarre creations to make a 3rd game, not that it's a game that really needs any more sequels.

[cavalcade]

Who owns the Geometry Wars IP? Activision, Bizarre or Microsoft?

[Number45]

It's not going to be Microsoft, I would imagine Activision would have bought all rights when they bought the company. If we're lucky, IP will be a part of any sale (although I guess that's unlikely).