Activision selling/closing down Bizarre Creations

[Shifty Geezer]

Big releases cannibalize sales around their release date, but ultimately they promote the genre.

I don't disagree, but they can't single-handedly prop up a dying breed. If racing is on the way out, it's on the way out. GT5 will sell well, but that won't show the racing genre is back with a vengeance, nor convince people who aren't interested in racing any more to go and grab other racing games. Such is fashion.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Aye that's the feeling I get also. That GT5 will continue to do quite well, after all it's almost a part of pop culture now. Forza should continue to do well on X360. And that other AAA racers will continue to underperform.

I'm willing ot bet a lot of publishers are looking closely at the newest NFS game. And that how it performs is going to one factor of many influencing whether funding goes up or down for racing games in general.

It won't have the same excuses as all the racers released last holiday seasons. It can't claim to have competition not only from Forza 3, but also (pick three) NFS, Blur, Split Second, Dirt 2, and anything else that was released.

Regards,
SB

 

[aselto]

I don't disagree, but they can't single-handedly prop up a dying breed. If racing is on the way out, it's on the way out. GT5 will sell well, but that won't show the racing genre is back with a vengeance, nor convince people who aren't interested in racing any more to go and grab other racing games. Such is fashion.

We're not sure if it's on its way out or if it is going to stabilize at certain level. The circumstances for the racing genre were quite unfortunate - no full Gran Turismo and no good Need for Speed (until now?), two pillars of the genre last gen, so the PS2 racing fans didn't have motivation to migrate to newer platforms. Xbox1 players did migrate to 360, but it wasn't a huge audience.

The racing genre is (or was) undoubtedly in decline. I can't think of any new successful racing series that appeared this generation. There are, however, some things that may improve the genre's popularity - GT5 release, supposedly good NfS (I didn't like the demo and won't buy it though ) and FM3 being bundled with a very popular X360 SKU, FM3 being a very good and accesible game. Will it help? We'll see. I hope so.

Spoiler

Though talking about racing games and ignoring Mario Kart Wii and MK DS is ignoring elephant in the room

Worst case, racers will wind up like platformers - there is room for them, publishers just can't oversaturate the market and be careful with budgeting.

 

[(((interference)))]

GT5's going to do well, but I wouldn't use that success to expect other racing titles to do well. You get some gamers who'll try a bit of everything, with one racer, one shooter, etc., and GT will be the racer they were holding out for. I don't believe the majority of GT buyers will be on the lookout for other racing games. This will be true of all flagship titles of a genre I think, that as the genre dies, the lead still waves the flag proudly. In however many years times when shooters are passe, Halo will still make phenominal sales, but I wouldn't then set out to make a shooter to follow in its footsteps, when everyone else is riding a different bandwagon (fitness rythmic cooperative platforming FTW!).

I agree, the GT audience is either hardcore sim fans who wouldn't look at an arcade racer or more casual fans who just want the game because it is GT and will have the most drool worthy car models in the industry.

I suspect there'll be quite a lot of copies of GT which just sit there gathering dust until friends come over so they can show off the graphics.

GT5 and Forza cater to a very different audience than the likes of Blur, Burnout, NFS etc. and their success is pretty much assured due to them being the only driving sim on their respective console (the rivalry between them also helps).

I also think the length of racing games is a factor which could turn people off making the investment in buying a racer (since they won't have the time to complete it). And of course the gameplay and environments tends to be more repetitive than your RPGs or open world games that also take huge amounts of time to complete.

 

[RudeCurve]

I'm a huge PGR fan but when it came time to buy a racing game I got NFS Shift. Blur just seemed like a stupid concept IMO. Gonna be buying Dirt 2 next week.

 

[P on the rocks]

Nowadays even one financial failure is enough to get busted, but Bizarre actually had a second chance after The Club's mediocre results. I also think that their racing games were cool, but Blur should've sold far, far better to keep them running. Can't even tell why it failed, looked nice and as far as I know the gameplay wasn't bad either. Marketing maybe?

I can tell you why I didn't like it. It was advertised as if it was Mario Kart for adults but after I played it, I had the impression that it is a drab looking Wipeout that runs with half the framerate. The magic energy balls didn't fit with the realistic look of the rest of the game. The effects were overdone and made the screen less readable. Even the car handling wasn't exciting. The game didn't do anything new that enhances the experience you have with the game and it didn't do anything better than other games have done in the past.

I think, Bizarre has some very talented people but they often make bad decisions early on that have wide implications. Then again, I wouldn't know how to make Geometry Wars Evolved 2 a better game than it already is. I hope they survive and find their way.

 

[kagemaru]

I've owned almost every game they have made since Fur Fighters. I'm part of the problem since I didn't get Blur or the James Bond game, but I do hope they land on their feet.

I'm always sad when I read about developers being hung out to dry.

 

[deathindustrial]

I can tell you why I didn't like it. It was advertised as if it was Mario Kart for adults but after I played it, I had the impression that it is a drab looking Wipeout that runs with half the framerate. The magic energy balls didn't fit with the realistic look of the rest of the game. The effects were overdone and made the screen less readable. Even the car handling wasn't exciting. The game didn't do anything new that enhances the experience you have with the game and it didn't do anything better than other games have done in the past.

My initial opinion matched yours however after getting the game for the wife (who played the crap out of the demo) I have to say that the online component proved to have a lot of staying power. A very well implemented lobby system (compared to what you usually see on the PS3) made it easy to get into games and the overall track and power up layout lent itself to very active and bombastic race events. There was also steady progression even if you sucked so any skill level of user could play it and still feel like they were getting somewhere. Blur always seemed to have a perfect mix of "You rat bastard!!!" and "In yer face!" type moments through out every race which is exactly what you want in this sort of cart racer.

It is the exact opposite of Split / Second in that single player for Blur is meh while the online rocks (Split / Second having a very poor online implementation from my experience).

I think it was priced too high for too long and it is a shame that more folks did not get a chance to try it out. It would be an especially good bundle type game I think.

Cheers

 

[Cyan]

I can tell you why I didn't like it. It was advertised as if it was Mario Kart for adults but after I played it, I had the impression that it is a drab looking Wipeout that runs with half the framerate. The magic energy balls didn't fit with the realistic look of the rest of the game. The effects were overdone and made the screen less readable. Even the car handling wasn't exciting. The game didn't do anything new that enhances the experience you have with the game and it didn't do anything better than other games have done in the past.

I think, Bizarre has some very talented people but they often make bad decisions early on that have wide implications. Then again, I wouldn't know how to make Geometry Wars Evolved 2 a better game than it already is. I hope they survive and find their way.

I only played Blur's demo, but as you say, I really really hope some company hires them or buys Bizarre Creations, because they are very talented people which made some of the best racing games I ever played --meaning PGR series.

Perhaps they just excel at those two genres or games in particular but it's very obvious they have enough talent to make original games. They would need time to develop another game and forget about Blur lack of success, at least in the sales department.

 

[Acert93]

To add the the Eurogamer article, the racing genre isn't just getting more comeptitive, but it is following the trend of the industry: games are expensive to make and buy. Online tends to gravitate the market to big titles and in turn these big titles trend toward being very, very feature rich. A game like Forza 3, for example, has over 400 cars and over 20 tracks but also can be super-sim like but also very user friendly. As the game is very polished and content rich a game like Forza carves out a huge segment of the market. The market has really fueld the "blockbuster" mentality. Maybe a publisher could break that trend with releasing $35 quality products with the intent to move volume on quality titles that lack the depth of the bigger brothers. Or a shift toward arcade games. But it is really hard to compete against a GT5 and Forza, a Halo or COD, etc in terms of polish and depth of content.

Per BC, they have some really neat photomapping tools for recreating real world locals. I hope that technology isn't lost. I think MS could work them into their "driving" division with Turn10 and BC working in parallel on congruent franchises, sharing car assets and technology.

 

[Cyan]

I've owned almost every game they have made since Fur Fighters. I'm part of the problem since I didn't get Blur or the James Bond game, but I do hope they land on their feet.

I'm always sad when I read about developers being hung out to dry.

Same here....

I didn't play all their games but Project Gotham Racing 2 left a deep impression on me. I'd place it in my top 3 among all Xbox 1 games. It was the first game I played on the Xbox 360 and the first one I played on HD using a VGA cable and a PC display.

I remember looking around the whole length of the tracks to take a look at the buildings, which were amazingly recreated in the game.

I also took a photo of a Mercedes in the garage, with my old mobile phone that I use now as an alarm clock, nothing more. It's still there in the main interface of the phone after 5 years.

A friend told me once that the photo looked amazing, and the car was so beautiful. I replied him; "It's a photo from a videogame". "A game??!!" he said; "Wow, it's amazing how they make games now".

Here is a video showing the different cities in the game, for the nostalgia factor. I had quite a few photos I had made using Photo mode:

The game was SO fun....Not as fine tuned as PGR2 though, given the fact that the different events were more balanced in PGR2 -maybe because the game was rushed to come out during X360's launch-.

In PGR3 obtaining a Gold or Platinum medal was sometimes very easy, other times it seemed downright impossible.

However, every PGR2 medal was so finely tuned and timed in their design for every event, that winning a Gold or Platinum medal required a similar effort or achievement regardless the track.

There was also a Sony's ad sponsoring GT, if I remember correctly, showing a pic of PGR3.

The graphics by the time it came out were amazing . They aren't as surprising nowadays but most people thought back then that the PGR3 pics previous to the console's launch were photoshopped to death or something, and that wasn't the case.

I just hope a good company like EA or even Sony, Microsoft..., etc, buy Bizarre Creations. I'd rather prefer MS buying them because they would keep making PGR :smile: games for years.

I heard that Turn 10 is going to make the next PGR . If so, then I won't buy the game. They seem not to have a clue how to make fun games. Plus, their CEO is a real big mouth.

 

[Cyan]

I thought it would be a good idea adding a gif showing how great PGR4 looks despite being a game released back in 2007, turning 3 this year.

http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/4764/pgr4gameplayf430scuderi.gif

Mod: Good idea to link, bad idea to embed large gifs.

Bizarre's talent at work here, albeit currently it goes in a direction I don't like much. There aren't news about the situation as of late but I suppose a good company will buy the studio, as there's a LOT of potential there.

Some pics showing how great PGR4 is:

http://img607.imageshack.us/img607/8337/e662e3.jpg
http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/5222/7d67c4.jpg

Mod: Linked to excess images - this isn't the gallery thread! The above is plenty enough to prove the point.

Before GT5 came out it was the best looking racing game on consoles out there, I think.

This is a video of a night race showing the transition from clear/cloudy, to rainy weather:

There's also a lenghty, fun demo, where you can drive on a snowy Nurburgring and some other tracks. It's one of the best demos in the marketplace because of the content and it lets you play with some cars and motorbikes.

 

[ban25]

I've been where Bizarre is now, so I sympathize with what those people are going through. However, I'll also say that making a string of unsuccessful titles is personally draining and if they ultimately don't make it, there may be a silver lining in that those people will have the opportunity to start something new or go somewhere else where they can be successful.

 

[aselto]

Funny how people were still expecting pie-in-the-sky graphics in 2007 and were unimpressed by PGR4's graphics back then, but now the game finally gets recognition for the staggering amount of detail put into the tracks.

 

[kagemaru]

Funny how people were still expecting pie-in-the-sky graphics in 2007 and were unimpressed by PGR4's graphics back then, but now the game finally gets recognition for the staggering amount of detail put into the tracks.

Isn't it usually the case where great creators are rarely recognized in their prime?

 

[(((interference)))]

RIP Bizarre

Companies interested in buying Bizarre Creations have instead waited for the studio to close so they can take staff pickings, a key Activision exec has claimed.

The 200-odd workers at Bizarre were yesterday advised by Activision to close operations – a decision understood to have been accepted by the Liverpool-based studio’s management.

Bizarre was put in a 90-day consultation period in November, yet Develop sources revealed one day later that a number of companies were interested in saving the studio through acquisition.

Yet according to Coddy Johnson, Activision Worldwide Studios’ chief operating officer, those interested parties decided instead to wait for the studio to close down so they could plunder staff.

http://www.develop-online.net/news/36797/Breaking-Activision-recommends-Bizarre-closure
http://www.develop-online.net/news/36803/Bizarre-bidders-waiting-on-closure-to-pick-at-talent

 

[ban25]

RIP Bizarre




http://www.develop-online.net/news/36797/Breaking-Activision-recommends-Bizarre-closure
http://www.develop-online.net/news/36803/Bizarre-bidders-waiting-on-closure-to-pick-at-talent

It's hard to sell a company that potential buyers know is going out of business.

 

[Onkl Bjorni]

RIP

http://vimeo.com/20084659

Rest in peace Bizarre Creations... Wish you got the chance to make PGR5

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Damn shame... We've worked for those guys some years ago, some of the stuff is even there in that movie...

 

[chroniceyestrain]

Metropolis Street Racer one of my favorites of all time.