Activision buys Bizarre Creation: Info on current and future projects in here

[Cheezdoodles]

Is it really as simple as that though?

It seems being "under Sony's wing" really is beneficial to dev houses. Take Naughty Dog, Insomniac and Evolution Studios until recently, all operating on their own essentially, Sony are hardly knocking down doors to buy any of them, yet the treatment they get from Sony seems to have these devs locked down.

There is more to it than simply throwing money around in my opinion.

This is imo a pretty ridiculous comment.


First of all, Naughty Dog and Evolution studios are both owned by SCE. Insomniac's publisher is Sony, and they own the rights to their most successfull franchises. They are not operating on their own, Naughty Dog and Evolution has to obey whatever direction Sony tells them to, and Insomniac does aswell, unless they want to see their creations like Ratchet and Clank (and resistance) be given to another team (thus loosing money).

I dont see how you can make an argument like that, worded like its significantly better to work under sonys wing. Its the same.

In general, being a first party developer is without a doubt, the best situation to be in for a developer, first party regardless if its nintendo, ms or Sony. First party means job security, and big budgets. Take a team like Ninja Theory, if they wheren't first party, all those people would probably be looking for new jobs right now, based on how sales are going.

There is more to it than simply throwing money around in my opinion.

Why would there be anything else than money involved? The people that own these companies are usually the founders, and in some cases a handful employees that helped starting the whole thing up with stock options, 9 out of 10 cases, all of them leave directly after a sale. The rest of the developers, well, they kinda need a job dont they?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Ninja Theory aren't Sony owned. It's funny how no-one can remember who owns who in these discussions!

 

[Cheezdoodles]

Ninja Theory aren't Sony owned. It's funny how no-one can remember who owns who in these discussions!

Whatever, they are published by Sony. That helps alot when trying to stay alive .

 

[Cheezdoodles]

In general I agree, but certain key partners should be kept in-house.

How many think it would be ok for Sony if Polyphony Digital was bought by EA?

Ok for Sony how?

Assuming the offer is big enough, it should be okay for Sony. As a gamer it may not be okay for you, but for stockholders, it probably would.

 

[aselto]

Microsoft plans to continue PGR franchise. They'll probably give it to another developer... Eden Games maybe?

http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/feature/?id=17572

GameDaily BIZ contacted Microsoft and a spokesperson said, "Bizarre Creations has been an great partner for Microsoft Game Studios and we wish them nothing but the best in the future. Project Gotham Racing is a signature racing franchise for Xbox 360 and Xbox LIVE and we plan to continue the series but we have nothing further to announce."

 

[Cheezdoodles]

Microsoft plans to continue PGR franchise. They'll probably give it to another developer... Eden Games maybe?

http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/feature/?id=17572

If MS can spend $500million on Rare, they should atleast be able to spend twice that on Polyphondy digital. Buy them and get it over with allready

 

[TheChefO]

Ok for Sony how?

heheh

Point taken, but they are a critical component to Sony's success. IMO, so is/was BC for MS.

 

[TheChefO]

.. they should atleast be able to spend twice that on Polyphondy digital. Buy them and get it over with allready

{que 'the Jeffersons' theme song}

 

[Crossbar]

I agree. At this point, which company is churning out AAA titles on a more regular basis??

It's no contest. The 360 exclusives so far have been of much higher quality and quantity than the competition. With Gears, COD2, PGR3, PGR4, Crackdown, Bioshock & Mass Effect,

Crackdown an AAA title?

I thought there was consensus about the reason for the crazy pre-order numbers of Crackdown was the Halo3 Beta bundle.

Sometimes I get a feeling you are trying just a little bit to hard singing the Microsoft gospel.

Considering the 360 had the next gen market exclusively one year ahead of competetion they better have a higher quantity of games and that is good to a certain degree, but not a lot of people are buying PGR3 today.

 

[Rangers]

Translation:

Sony, unlike MS, understands the impact that quality developers can make on a platform.

And that's why they're dominating the console wars...oh wait.

I'm not happy with PGR from BC leaving MS exclusivity, and I dont know but multi-platform games definitly dont have the same cache, personally I could care less about need for speed, burnout, and the other mult-plat racers, whereas PGR is actually a darn fun series to me, a guy who is not into racers in the least. However, Microsoft probably knows what they're doing here. MS software lineup on 360 has been very strong to date, and so whatever strategy they're pursuing seems to be working.

 

[Acert93]

PGR, while a good seller, hasn't been great. PG2 broke 1M, and PGR3 broke 1M on the $19.98 PGR3/FM1 bundle. What PGR did for MS was more in placement: PGR1/Xbox Launch. PGR2/Live Launch. PGR3/360 Launch.

What concerns me is MS is pretty shallow on the 1st party front. Sure, contracting exclusives has worked well. But the market can shift. And importantly having internal partners to share resources as well as push the agenda is vital. MS has Bungie and then has a number of studios that have smallish genres they focus on or have been in hit/miss on titles.

BC offered a nice balance of totally validating their console technically while bundling it with high quality games. And their tools and direction/experience with photo-based design could be exactly what is needed in 2010/11 for the Xbox 3.

Who is going to make the 720 title that validates it technically?

Good move for Activision, could be a good move for BC, and MS... they should let the PGR license die. Who could make a good arcade racer for them??

 

[rabidrabbit]

Perhaps MS thinks they need only one racing/driving franchise, and Forza Motorsport might suit better for that position. While not strictly an "arcade" racer, nor was PGR with it's real life licenced cars and aim for realism in graphics at least.

Maybe MS thought the PGR and Forza games were competing against each other, and either one had to leave.
My impression, while not having really played either of the franchises more than some hour or two, is that PGR has started to steer away from arcade towards more realism, and Forza, while advanced in it's simulating of physics, can actually be played as an arcade game on lower difficulty.

While I'm not familiar on who actually pays for the licenses to use the gars in those games, could it be someone thought it doesn't look good if you pay for the same licences twise, once for PGR and one for Forzza.
So, Forza overtook PGR as the no.1 racing game on xbox, and MS has decided to put it forward as the xbox racing /driving game, instead of PGR.

Oh, I see MS said PGR is still a very important franchise and they plan to continue it on xbox. It's just me who thinks otherwise, it would be stupid of them to say "we absolutely want to kill PGR"

 

[Mr. Domino]

First of all, Naughty Dog and Evolution studios are both owned by SCE. Insomniac's publisher is Sony, and they own the rights to their most successfull franchises. They are not operating on their own, Naughty Dog and Evolution has to obey whatever direction Sony tells them to, and Insomniac does aswell, unless they want to see their creations like Ratchet and Clank (and resistance) be given to another team (thus loosing money).

IIRC the rights to Resistance and Ratchet and Clank are not owned by Sony though. It's still property of Insomniac.

 

[Crossbar]

IIRC the rights to Resistance and Ratchet and Clank are not owned by Sony though. It's still property of Insomniac.

At least the Resistance IP is owned by Sony, I remember that from a podcast interview with Phil Harrison, he said you could even read it on the disk case.

I would be surprised if Ratchet & Clank was different.

 

[dobwal]

Maybe MS will turn over the PGR franchise to Turn 10 and allow them to maintain Forza for the simulation crowd and PGR for the arcade crowd.

 

[TheChefO]

PGR, while a good seller, hasn't been great. PG2 broke 1M, and PGR3 broke 1M on the $19.98 PGR3/FM1 bundle. What PGR did for MS was more in placement: PGR1/Xbox Launch. PGR2/Live Launch. PGR3/360 Launch.

What concerns me is MS is pretty shallow on the 1st party front. Sure, contracting exclusives has worked well. But the market can shift. And importantly having internal partners to share resources as well as push the agenda is vital. MS has Bungie and then has a number of studios that have smallish genres they focus on or have been in hit/miss on titles.

BC offered a nice balance of totally validating their console technically while bundling it with high quality games. And their tools and direction/experience with photo-based design could be exactly what is needed in 2010/11 for the Xbox 3.

Who is going to make the 720 title that validates it technically?

Good move for Activision, could be a good move for BC, and MS... they should let the PGR license die. Who could make a good arcade racer for them??

Thank you Joshua - that is exactly what I was trying to say.

 

[TheChefO]

Maybe MS will turn over the PGR franchise to Turn 10 and allow them to maintain Forza for the simulation crowd and PGR for the arcade crowd.

For some reason, I don't see myself getting too excited at the prospect of T10 "pushing the envelope" on pgr5 ...

 

[dobwal]

For some reason, I don't see myself getting too excited at the prospect of T10 "pushing the envelope" on pgr5 ...

Why not? Turn 10 is a racing dev that would have access to all the code and art to PGR. I think a big problem that could possibly occur that in a interest to differentiate the two games, PGR might be push too far to the arcade side of racing genre.

 

[DJ12]

Turn 10 is a racing dev that would have access to all the code and art to PGR.

Come again.

From what I can gather from this thread, MS only hold the rights to the name, not everything Bizarre Creations have ever designed/coded for the series.

 

[AlNom]

They could Turn the graphics up to 11 () for PGR @30fps (gameplay graphics == FM2 replay graphics) and keep the same gameplay philosophy. I don't see why it has to change all that much. PGR is already arcadey.

From what I can gather from this thread, MS only hold the rights to the name, not everything Bizarre Creations have ever designed/coded for the series.

It may not be that big of a deal with a bunch of the cars overlapping between the two games anyway.