Kotaku
Activision has entered the racing game...game in a big way, by purchasing the developers of one of the greatest racing series around, Project Gotham Racing. That's right, Activision has purchased Bizarre Creations, creators of PGR as well as Geometry Wars. The Bizarre team will continue working on current projects while beginning development on two new 'AAA' titles, with the first expected sometime after fiscal year 2009.
Martyn Chudley, Managing Director of Bizarre Creations, said, "Our goal at Bizarre Creations has always been to do all we can to nurture our creative and passionate teams, who excel at and enjoy what they do. Activision's independent studio model will continue giving us creative freedom to build exciting new brands."What this basically means is Microsoft can stop hogging all the racing goodness and let some of the other consoles take a spin. It won't be PGR of course, but whatever it ends up being should be awesome. Bring back Metropolis Street Racer!
Activision Acquires U.K. Game Developer Bizarre CreationsActivision Enters $1.4 Billion Racing Genre Market, Representing More than 10% of Worldwide Video Game Market
SANTA MONICA, Calif., Sep 26, 2007: Activision, Inc. (Nasdaq:ATVI) today announced that it has acquired U.K.-based video game developer Bizarre Creations, one of the world's premier video game developers and a leader in the racing category, a $1.4 billion market that is the fourth most popular video game genre and represents more than 10% of the total video game market worldwide.
This acquisition represents the latest step in Activision's ongoing strategy to enter new genres. Last year, Activision entered the music rhythm genre through its acquisition of RedOctane's Guitar Hero franchise, which is one of the fastest growing franchises in the video game industry.
With more than 10 years' experience in the racing genre, Bizarre Creations is the developer of the innovative multi-million unit franchise Project Gotham Racing, a critically-acclaimed series for the Xbox® and Xbox 360®. The Project Gotham Racing franchise currently has an average game rating of 89%, according to GameRankings.com and has sold more than 4.5 million units in North America and Europe, according to The NPD Group, Charttrack and Gfk.
Bizarre Creations is currently finishing development on the highly-anticipated third-person action game, The Club, for SEGA, which is due to be released early 2008. They are also the creators of the top-selling arcade game series Geometry Wars on Xbox Live Arcade®.
Bizarre Creations and its games have won numerous industry awards including: Best Racing Game for Project Gotham Racing 2 from the prestigious British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA); the Industry Grand Prix Award from Develop; MCV's UK Development Team 2006 award; Best Racing/Driving Game from IGN; Game of the Year from OXM and Gamespy for Project Gotham Racing 3; and IGN's Best XBLA Game for Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved.
"Activision continues to grow and drive greater value for our shareholders by broadening our portfolio and entering new gaming categories with strong global appeal," said Robert Kotick, Chairman and CEO of Activision, Inc. "Bizarre Creations is the leading independent developer with a proven track record in developing highly successful and influential original properties, especially in the racing field. They are one of the most innovative and creative studios in the industry, and we are very excited to welcome this talented creative team to Activision."
Mike Griffith, President and CEO of Activision Publishing, Inc., added, "Bizarre Creations will play an important role in our growth strategy as we develop an original new intellectual property for this important racing segment, expand our portfolio in other genres and utilize their proprietary technology for cross platform development."
Martyn Chudley, Managing Director of Bizarre Creations, said, "Our goal at Bizarre Creations has always been to do all we can to nurture our creative and passionate teams, who excel at and enjoy what they do. Activision's independent studio model will continue giving us creative freedom to build exciting new brands. Their financial support and marketing prowess will also enable us to build upon the commercial success that we currently enjoy, and take the company - and our games - to an even higher level."
Under the terms of the acquisition, Bizarre Creations will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Activision and the company's management team and employees continue with the company as their teams start to develop two new AAA titles alongside their current projects. The 160-person development studio is located in Liverpool, England. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed. Activision expects that its first game from Bizarre Creations will be released after fiscal year 2009.
Comments
wait...so could PGR come on the ps3 eventually?...not that I care...not a racing fan.
Ew.
I never did like Activision that much.
@vecha: Yea, but the PS3 owners will still just buy GT5 instead.
@ceilingFANBOY:
Yea...guess ps3 owners/fanboys won't shove it in the face of the 360 owners/fanboys then..lol
Who owns the IP to PGR? MS or Bizarre? Just because one develops them doesn't make them the owner to a franchise.
PGR is all about the graphics, the racing itself is prety subpar. I don't are about racing games though, I'd rather just jump in my car and experience the real thing.
I don't think PGR4 can come out on PS3. But the next installment may, or maybe they will just start a new racing franchise?
@JonC:
Yea good point...
Ah, but what about that darling of Xbox live, Geometry Wars?
And this affects the two greatest racing games ever how? (Outrun and Mario Kart)
@perrinbar:
maybe it'll show up on the psn
Can we say Geometry Wars for the PS3 - wow what a major upset for fanboys
omg no
I would love to see Bizarre get back on to an F1 game!
Maybe Activision'll give them Tony Hawk?
Metropolis Street Racer was a great series. Knowing that Bizarre was creating PGR sold me on the Xbox. RIP Dreamcast. :-(
The PGR licence belongs to Microsoft. So no multi-support PGR, that will have to be a new licence.
I wonder why MS didn't pick them up.
Ahhh, MSR! My Dreamcast was very happy with that game (I hope so because it was welded inside for months). That game alone almost had me buying an Xbox for the sort-of sequel Project Gotham Racing.
MSR PS3 PLEASE!!
@Kokuryukai:
No need. PS3's got Super Stardust HD
@perrinbar: Well, Bizarre owns taht, as demonstrated by the new versions for DS and Wii, along with the one on Steam.
So, PSN Geo Wars or anything else doesn't seem that far fetched.
Do they still own the MSR series? I can't remember who published that one... Eurocom? Sega?
I guess it doesn't really matter. They'll just come up with a new name for essentially the same game, just like they did when they went from MSR to PGR.
@MadGodji:
Or one of their older titles like Metropolitan Street Racer
You would think that MS would have bought them if anyone since it was with MS that they got big as a 2nd party. Owell..
What a crock of shit. I'll give it a year, maybe 2, before Activision runs Bizarre into the ground. Activision's way of doing things is to force their devs to port their games to every console without offering them the support necessary to do so. This result in lesser quality across the board. The only studios under Activision's tainted influence that are immune to this are Infinity Ward and id. Everyone else gets a raw deal. RIP Bizarre.
@perrinbar: They are already working on a Wii version, confirmed months ago.
Really, this could go either way for Bizarre (at least it wasn't EA that acquired them), but I'm not expecting the quality of all of their products to immediately plummet to the ground.
Guess the Ridge Racer series finally has some competition......or not.
@Draconis: i am
just look what happened to the Spider-Man series or the Tony Hawk series. this sucks.
Guitar Hero 3 anyone? Activision gets their paws on it and in one version the game has taken on some *very* strange characteristics.
This really makes me sad - PGR is one of my favorite racing franchises. I hope Bizarre can fend them off for as long as possible. Sooner or later, though, we all know Activision will screw it up.
Being a fan of Geometry Wars, I am not sure whether this will be a good or a bad thing. I'm already concerned with Bizarre not doing Galaxies, but atleast it sounds like they are making a true follow up to the XBLA edition based on the statements about Waves.
@AgainstOne: Spider-Man turned to shit because of Treyarch, who also make the craptacular COD3.
As for the fall of Tony Hawk...It mainly has to do with a lazy development team, and perhaps more so, stupid consumers who keep on buying millions of copies every year. In other words, the same problem with EA and Madden.
Great. Now we'll have to buy wheels for our PGR cars separately on XBL. Run out of gas? 500 points.
Screw the gotham series, bring back MSR! Man, do any of you guys remember the delays for that game? waiting and waiting for it to be released? boy that game didn't let me down, i waxed it for months non stop.
So what happens to the Turn 10 and Bizarre collaboration now? They've been sharing code for the past two years or so (Gotham TV, tournaments).
I can only see this being good for the Project Gotham and Geometry Wars series. Activision has a great track record of keeping the purity of existing franchises and being very fair in the pricing of both the games themselves and any additional content. Take the Guitar Hero franchise for instance, it's not like they released a half-baked 80's expansion pack for full price, jacked up the price of the game and peripheral to $100, put in silly things like boss battles, or charged exorbitant prices for downloads that are promised but not delivered!
Oh...wait.
...answering my own question...
A blog post on Bizarre's own forums by a Bizarre employee seems to indicate that Bizarre and Microsoft Game Studios are done with each other, so Turn 10 will no longer be able to use Bizarre's R&D and vice versa.
Me thinks Turn 10 and MGS is the loser on this deal.
The blog post in question here: [www.bizarrecreations.com]
@jaredgood1:
You're bonkers.
@drawp: exactly and that game rocks
@Pixelantes Anonymous:
Forza has much more R&D than PGR did. Also the PGR video stuff was all done in house at MS. Same with the Forza one. Too bad about them not working together though.
GT>PGR
*stabbed*
@darkened-flame: Next year it'll be Air Guitar Hero: just an empty jewel case.
@justhesh: Possibly, but I'd still play those over any other racers (granted, Outrun loses a lot without the arcade cabinet).
Why do people care about geometry wars so much? That game came out in the seventies and isn't any more amazingly fun now than it was then. If you ask me flow is the better of the two by far.
@kuzuboshii: I've been hooked up to Super Stardust HD on the PS3 for a while now. Although not exactly the same as Geometry Wars, the gameplay is very similar. Personally I think it's a much better game than Geometry Wars.
Nooooooooooo!
How odd! I thought MS would have kept Bizarre close to tehir chest. They're the reason why I bought that dark green hulk of a box after falling in love with MSR.
It would be real nice to play MSR all over again though, somwhow I feel that this is bad news though. If MS decided that Forza was more than enough of a replacement for pgr, then they're mistaken.
Thinking about the PGR series, so far, only PGR2 has been worthy of serious playtime. 1 & 3 were rushed launch titles, so maybe this could a good thing.
Meh, I'm still hurt by the whole Sony & Lik Sang news story to care anymore
@T-man: That would suck, playing a game that makes it easier to win if you are rich... other than rich people can sit at home and play games all day because they don't have to go to work.
Metropolis Street Racer is PGR. There's barely any difference.
Madness.. Madness i tells ya..
The fact M$ agreed to sell Bizzare will probably be a really bad mistake in the near future..
that or they needed the money..
lol
PGR is the only racing game needed to balance all the shit games like NFS/Flatout/Juiced.
I don't like Activision, but it totally beats EA...and MS just took a swift kick in the ass.
Excellent! Bizarre is a great developer and I can't wait to see what they can do with the W-... er... with Activision.