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Activision shuts down Bizarre Creations

Corleth the Fey

By Corleth the Fey,
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Eighthours

Eighthours

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Activision has a total black spot when it comes to trying to sell the wares of any of its devs who aren't making a Call of Duty game. And it's total madness because COD is the one series Activision publishes which doesn't need any bloody marketing anymore.

Blur was sent to die. Blood Stone was sent to die. Acti studios are lumbered with awful release slots, terrible RRPs and fuck-all support from people who clearly know how to do the marketing game when they can be fucked to pull their finger out.

This is a "Rock Band 3 in Europe" level of dumb. I'm amazed that Acti still has a business, as it's so utterly pisspoor at handling anything other than its monster hit - which, let's not forget, it only has because of a certain Infinity Ward. It's fucked Guitar Hero due to greed, rammed the Tony Hawk franchise into the ground, and acquired a worse reputation than EA in its darkest days.

Clueless. Completely clueless. And not a shred of decency at the top either. Bizarre is one of my favourite devs. And it's entirely Acti's fucking fault that it's (apparently) fallen. Another one for the increasing graveyard of talent that Acti has raped.

FFS, any devs still contemplating joining this shit-shower: DON'T.

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son_of_helvetica

son_of_helvetica

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This news has totally shocked me. What's even worse is I know exactly how it'll feel for them to be in this situation - when Midway Newcastle was on the chopping block thanks to Chapter 11 bankruptcy, we had to wait for an outcome too. Every day had a sense that there would be a positive outcome out of it - interested parties visited the studio and we had hopes that their visits would lead to something which would save the studio. That didn't happen; it's a rollercoaster ride of good and bad days and the bad days happen during the final month.

What'll be worse is that Bizarre devs will start to haemorrhage from the studio as more stable prospects come along, or they'll be poached into other studios by friends. If a sale on the studio is late, then I suspect it won't be the same Bizarre which was at the beginning of the sale process. It's truly a horrible, horrible thing and I have nothing but empathy for the devs there.

What Activision has done is nothing short of diabolical - after the success of Black Ops, it has amazed me that they've done this. I feared that when Bizarre was bought by Activision, something horrible like this would happen. It has :(

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NecroMorrius

NecroMorrius

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They're utterly myopic. They drive every successful hit they have into the ground with endless iterations, whilst completely failing to support their lesser developers or nurture new IP. Tony Hawks has gone to shit, Guitar Hero has gone to shit, COD is looking dog-tired and yet they have four or five of them in development. Spiderman? lol. Occasionally they'll make a half-arsed attempt to market something (like Prototype, or Blur) but mostly if you're not a COD or Guitar Hero title you might as well scribble the name of your game on a sandwich board and stand on a street corner.

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The Liberal Elite

The Liberal Elite

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They're utterly myopic. They drive every successful hit they have into the ground with endless iterations, whilst completely failing to support their lesser developers or nurture new IP. Tony Hawks has gone to shit, Guitar Hero has gone to shit, COD is looking dog-tired and yet they have four or five of them in development. Spiderman? lol. Occasionally they'll make a half-arsed attempt to market something (like Prototype, or Blur) but mostly if you're not a COD or Guitar Hero title you might as well scribble the name of your game on a sandwich board and stand on a street corner.

And? They sell. For now. I will be interested to see what happens with the next Modern Warfare, given the shit reception this one has apparently gotten from the punters.

And bizarre were responsible for one of the games you've named as half arsed, so are you saying they made the right decision?

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NecroMorrius

NecroMorrius

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And? They sell. For now. I will be interested to see what happens with the next Modern Warfare, given the shit reception this one has apparently gotten from the punters.

And bizarre were responsible for one of the games you've named as half arsed, so are you saying they made the right decision?

Shit reception as in fastest selling game of all time, yeah?

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Sng

Sng

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Shit reception as in people bought it and went "it's shit".

Heard a lot of it myself, everyone I know into videogames who aren't into videogames enough to know it's a Treyarch game are all like "hmm yeah it's ok but not great", etc. Generally quite disappointed.

COD fatigue started when BLOPS came out! Downhill from here.

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MK-1601

MK-1601

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It's kind of a simplification, but EA's corporate culture is one of engineers, Activision's is one of marketing people.

EA understand the value of research. They're willing to make big bets (Warhammer, Dead Space, Mirror's Edge, Old Republic) if they understand the problem involved. Activision don't understand their cash cows have to come from somewhere.

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Badger

Badger

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it amazed me to see so many games being made for all format and no uk games industry. Shame we don't have a UK publisher apart from Codemasters.

Think Codemasters should buy Bizarre Creations.

You'd then have DiRT 3, RaceDriver and F1 2010 creators alongside the creators of PGR and Blur...

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Badger

Badger

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People bought it on the strength of the previous game, didn't they? I don't know anyone who's actually happy with the game. Treyarch made CoD games are like the odd numbered Star Trek films.

I think there are plenty of people who are fairly happy with Black Ops - it's not a shit game, but it's got a vague feeling of 'meh' despite the amount Treyarch crammed into it. I think it's the loss of some of the tactical aspects (such as they were) of MW2. All the right elements are floating around, but it feels like the last 10% that Infinity Ward put into the MW games is missing. And sales were definitely driven by the previous game, but I don't think any disappointment will be enough to kill the series quite yet - it'll take Activision flooding the market with every possible spin-off to do that, plus whatever Respawn come up with...

Back to Bizarre... I think Blur definitely suffered from a lack of great marketing and outreach - the main place I heard about how good it can be was on here, whereas if you look at the current amount of stuff coming out for Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, and the amount put out for F1 2010 etc, you can barely move for developer diaries, in-game footage etc.

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Dandy_Sephy

Dandy_Sephy

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Sony better pull there finger out for this one and fast.

What there about to make from GT5 over the coming weeks should more than help them snap up some of the most talented guys in the industry.

All of which will be spent funding GT6 for the next half decade.

Sony seem the least likely result, they aren't likely to be look for a new racing team.

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Spartan

Spartan

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So the devs that made MSR, PGR 1-4, Fur Fighters, Geometry Wars 1-2, Blur and Bloodstone get shut down just because their last 2 games sold poorly due to lack of advertising essentially?

Fuck, why the hell do people bother going into the game industry? All that talent is lost or wasted

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The Sarge

The Sarge

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Blur had a pretty big ad campaign (surely no-one's forgotten those Mario Kart-esque ads? Terribly misguided ad campaign), but still failed to sell well. Which is a real shame as it was a really good game.

As for Bloodstone, seems they did have a ad campaign but it wasn't as big as the Blur campaign. (I've yet to see an ad for BS, but they are on youtube and a few people have mentioned seeing the ads on TV.) I can't comment on if it's any good as Zavvi still haven't sent it. :angry:

Not that that excuses Acti's behaviour, but they did get behind both games. It's just a shame they weren't able to attract more sales.

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