Activision poised to call time on Bizarre Creations
Publisher "recommends closure" after failure to find a buyer
Bizarre Creations, the UK developer behind Project Gotham, Blur and Geometry Wars, is increasingly likely to close its doors after Activision recommended such action to the studio and its parent corporation today.
The move comes after the company spent nearly three months searching for a buyer to keep the studio operating as a single business concern after staff were placed on a 90 day notice period in November.
Activision COO Coddy Johnson made a statement to Develop Online explaining the decision earlier today.
"We've recommended a final option with the Bizarre team today. We've looked at all options. I want to be clear, our first choice was to try and keep this group together and find a buyer for the studio.
"We explored a lot of leads – pretty much anyone you can imagine in the industry. Unfortunately, so far we've not been able to find and interested parties.
"So we've made as a last resort, a recommendation to the team for closure."
Blur was an experimental new IP for the studio, moving away from the more accurate simulation driving games which the studio had previously been known for, and was reported to have sold less that less than 200,000 copies in its month of release.
Then, in November last year, stories began to emerge that the studio was looking at redundancies and a possible closure, with Activision looking to find a buyer as soon as possible. Despite rumours that several parties were interested in the acquisition, none have yet emerged.
A MSR remake on XBLA and PSN, a PGR 5 on Xbox 360, and everything running again.
Well, these are my hopes, maybe Microsoft is waiting for the last moment to give a just fairly decent offer.
Side note - Blur is fantastic.
Best of luck to you all.
If not, all the best to every individual.
Best of luck to everyone.
Too true; the North West has taken a hell of a beating over the last couple of years. I feel for those guys who've put in so much effort to make Bizarre what it was - a world class studio that attracted the attentions of the one of the world's biggest publishers.
There'll be all sorts of dissections as to what went wrong, but ultimately it's the UK industry that'll suffer as a whole. Sure, a lot of these guys will be able to find new roles here - I'm helping a bunch of them - but there are equally as many who'll be making the jump across the pond. Dark days for the UK indeed.
Good luck to you all.
My other thought is that hopefully people at Bizarre have something up their sleeves and may form a new development team from Bizarre's ashes, as apparently they've been receptive to the suggestion of the studio closure.
They do have alot of tallent and experience and sure do not always publish AAA in everything they do.
Its always easy to sit back and look at the mistakes in a title after it being released but not so much when you are working on it getting it ready for release.
Over the years I have worked with some quality teams in studios who are a shell of their former selves or no longer exist its sad but its been a very bad year for the industry and lets hope things are about to get better.
Good luck to the Bizarre guys!