For many years, Electronic Arts was labeled as an “evil” corporation by gamers. The company drew much ire from gamers, as EA seemed content with publishing predominantly sub-par sequels of existing intellectual properties, while gobbling up cutting edge game studios, only to absorb them into EA’s Borg Collective. Current CEO, John Riccitiello, is attempting to erase that label. Based on the publisher’s E3 press conference, I would say the company is moving in the right direction.
However, if EA does turn over a new leaf, does that mean that the videogame industry will be all sunshine and rainbows? No. There is no rest for the wicked.
Apparently, there is another third-party publisher that is willing to take the torch that EA is attempting to discard.
The merger between Activision and Vivendi Games, is finally complete. When shareholders overwhelmingly approved the consolidation earlier this month (July 8), Activision Blizzard became the largest third-party publisher in the industry (surpassing EA).
In the wake of the merger, Activision Blizzard has devoted some of its time to surveying the upcoming releases from the Vivendi-owned Sierra. Sierra is responsible for the recent “World in Conflict,”"Crash Bandicoot” and “Spyro” games, as well as upcoming titles such as “Ghostbusters: The Video Game,” “Prototype” and Tim Schafer’s “Brutal Legend.”
Some wondered if the now finalized merger would negatively affect any of those upcoming releases. “Ghostbusters” is scheduled to release on October 21, “Brutal Legend” is slated to ship on December 2, and “Prototype” will hit retail in April of next year.
Though none have been canceled, Activision Blizzard has apparently decided to not publish some of the aforementioned IPs.
According Yahoo!:
Further strengthening its foundation for future growth, Activision Publishing, Inc. today announced that the company will broaden its product portfolio by adding Vivendi Games’ multi-million unit selling properties Crash Bandicoot, Ice Age and Spyro to its roster of proven franchises. The company will also retain two new intellectual properties that are currently in development — Prototype and a second game that has not yet been announced.
While one of the titles has yet to be announced, there were two notable omissions from that list. Those would be “Ghostbusters” and “Brutal Legend.” Some assumed that Activision Blizzard had decided to cancel the absent Sierra titles. That assertion was incredibly premature.
Find out why on the second page.
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8 responses so far ↓
1 Paladin58 // Jul 30, 2008 at 9:32 am
I’m in agreement with this statement in its entirety… Well, almost. Activision does seem to have one thing differing it from the old Demonotronic Arts ways: They are giving autonomy to some of their development teams (Infinity Ward, Blizzard). As we all know, this was something the old EA didn’t do (RIP Westwood, Origin, Bullfrog, etc.).
2 Tweep. // Jul 30, 2008 at 9:46 am
Unfortunately gaming companies duties to “core gamers” is first and foremost to their shareholders who really don’t give a rats @$$ about us, the core gamers. How do you justify a game that most likely won’t sell well to appease a small segment of the gaming population that don’t purchase enough games en masse to ensure a title is successful?
Much as I would like to play Brutal Legend, it’s hard to argue with the decision not to pick it up from a business perspective. Yes, I would love to play the game, but from a business perspective… The reason this company has money is that they make money. They won’t have as much if they don’t publish games they think will sell well.
3 DazSLy Mcbain // Jul 30, 2008 at 10:07 am
“Current CEO, John Riccitiello, is attempting to erase that label” Yeh right, instead he is going to be doing micro transactions in games like spore etc! that guy gives me the creeps, reminds me of a bad guy like in total recall or something!
4 jonMadden loolz // Jul 30, 2008 at 11:45 am
I dont really hate EA that much, when i think about it, if EA dont make sports games, who will?
they have most experience with them, and are currently adding some extra stuff to each 08, 09 games etc, but then again its mostly the same each year, but they got a high standard on them from the beginning so np with that, anyway, to the other subject:Activision become more like EA, …the problem with all the underling companies under EA executive boards is that they dont have much freedom, they come up with great ideas for games even tho EA always have a final touch on the game, Story, violence, and other stuff, that is what makes the games so bad, there is always some interference from EA in some point and it corrupts the game itself, Let EA do the sports games, just dont interfere with great companies that make stuff for hardcore gamers, other then that EA only publish stuff and make crappy grafic engines, but moreover, The Activsion&Blizzard ? dosent look so bad, in years blizz have made theire own stuff since they where called Synergy, and i think that they will do all the current projects like diablo 3, starcraft 2 and fix all the latest wow wotlk bugs that theire alpha testers give to them, and without any interference from activision, then they will make theire fanbase happy, ….. alas if Activision dont do what EA do, then they will get a nice sum of money i guess without lifting a finger, while EA do all they can to make more money out of theire top crap titles, lets just hope that blizz, I-silver, and sierra can do theire own stuff like they do and leave activision for themselves bechause last time i checked, activision make not to bad grafic engines and storylines on the projects they started, oh, and Spyro, and Crash-b was good back on ps1, so lets hope they sit down and look back at some footage on spyro 1-3 and crash-b 1-3 and ctr, bechause what the sonic franchise on wii has become looks like crap, *not that i have wii tho* thats that, btw english is not my mother tounge and im not a up to date console gamer so go ahead and take up the bashbat and start swinging.
5 atvid shareholder // Jul 30, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Tweep, i’m a shareholder of activision/blizzard AND a “core gamer”. And frankly, i do give a rats ass about the quality of the games they make.
I think that saying ActiBlizzard is the new EA is a huge overstatement. Activision had a pretty crappy track record in my mind of making decent games, but now owning the Blizzard team means nothing but good news. I’ve got a lotta faith that purely making sequels is not what’s in store for Activision in the future. It just so happens that SC, WoW, CoD, and GH are great games that deserve sequels (verdict’s still out on D3). As for the Crash/Spyro, movie games (spiderman, kungfu panda), all game companies have a couple of games to satisfy the mainstream trend and kiddie demographic which never really ever had efforts in quality games in the first place… am I wrong?
6 frofury // Jul 30, 2008 at 1:45 pm
Maybe it’s just me but it seems stupid to not publish the Ghostbusters game.
7 Joe // Jul 30, 2008 at 4:35 pm
ActiTurd is the new EA. As much as I hate to say it I plan on picking up some EA games in the future. As for what the Turd makes GH has not been good after GH Two and that was because you know who is now making Rock Band. So to me the Turd has nothing I think that looks good the new COD game looks better then the third but still not as good as Four. Plus I want devs to stop making more Shooter games. Like there is a lot already why add more. Well thats just me though.
8 Will // Jul 31, 2008 at 1:34 am
first of all, kudos to EA for willing to change. I thought Activision should be smart enough to see that EA didn’t do good, why would they want to go the same path EA did? What happened to the days when videogames were pure and based on “from gamers to gamers”. Now all they think about is profits and ’safe’ paths. My conclusion is that they are becoming more and more blood sucking.
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