Key Vivendi franchises may be endangered

Daniel Golding

Key Vivendi franchises may be endangered by Daniel

PALGN News: Activision "will not publish" Ghostbusters, Brutal Legend, more.

legend166 · Posted: Wed Jul 30, 2008 12:27 am�� Post subject:

If Brutal Legend is not finished and published, the industry may as well pack up and leave and never come back.

Kashkin · Status: Offline Joined: 23 Mar 2008 Posts: 13 $poons: 4.90

What the heck? The Ghostbusters game seemed high profile. And the first Riddick game wasn't bad.

(Not to mention Brutal Legend)

Does Activision not -like- making money?

Cerebral · Posted: Wed Jul 30, 2008 2:46 am�� Post subject:

Uh oh. WET looked very, very awesome, so I'm hoping things work out.
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shiraj · Posted: Wed Jul 30, 2008 8:52 am�� Post subject:

now that Activision will not publish Ghostbusters - Who do you call .....

Fetidchimp · Posted: Wed Jul 30, 2008 10:19 am�� Post subject:

so between EA and activision we should have all the most retarded decisions wrapped up for about the next 20 years or so.......
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Skiller · Posted: Wed Jul 30, 2008 10:41 am�� Post subject:

BAHAHAHAHAHA! That is basically the opposite of what they should be doing the list of games they won't publish is pretty much the list of games I'd buy and the ones they will publish are the ones I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole... well except maybe prototype but I'm not holding my breath on that one.

As far as I'm concerned this is proof that publishers are brain dead idiots who know nothing about games.

snicks · Posted: Wed Jul 30, 2008 10:47 am�� Post subject:

What about Leisure Suit Larry?

Karai Pantsu · Posted: Wed Jul 30, 2008 10:57 am�� Post subject:

AllSchoolGamer · Status: Offline Joined: 22 Apr 2008 Posts: 874 $poons: 7.80

ittekimasu · Posted: Wed Jul 30, 2008 1:09 pm�� Post subject:

sounds like they want to focus more on the casual market instead of the market they were created to provide for, the core market.

hopefully this story has multiple endings.
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Karai Pantsu · Posted: Wed Jul 30, 2008 2:17 pm�� Post subject:

In a throughly vague yet entirely in character 'announcement', Tim Schafer claims that Brutal Legend is "fine".

Gamers, you may all now breath out a tentative sigh of relief.

Linky to Kotaku post

Edit:

Again, via Kotaku, Vivendi have reportedly said of Ghostbusters "It is not cancelled and will not be cancelled". Wonder who'll end up publishing?
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kaerlis · Posted: Wed Jul 30, 2008 2:22 pm�� Post subject:

It's heading into old EA territory, ie don't give a shit about anything but established cash cow franchises and milk them as much as possible.

Problem is, old IPs renewed every year get stale pretty quickly. ie, people get sick of buying tony hawk 9 or whatever other sequel after a while, and the returns slowly shrink lower over each sequel. Then they have EAs problem trying to get new IP and re-establish themselves again. Saving grace for them may be that games like spyro, crash, ice age marketed at kids would be harder to kill as a franchise than those aimed at core older gamers.
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Jaws · Posted: Wed Jul 30, 2008 7:16 pm�� Post subject:

What the hell is happening to the world?

Greed seems to destroy everything it has the potential of seeping all over. In ten years of so, we may live in a world where games dont have soul anymore.

InvivnI · Posted: Wed Jul 30, 2008 7:41 pm�� Post subject:

No World in Conflict expansion? Poor Massive, I'm sure they'll find a new publisher.

Yeah gotta love Activision's decisions there. Though I do wonder what they'll do to revive the Crash franchise, last I heard it was kind of floundering on the edge obscurity. Same with the Spyro franchise in that respect. I miss the PSX days of decent platforming games.
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Jellyfish · Posted: Wed Jul 30, 2008 7:43 pm�� Post subject:

Yes! No more bloody 50 Cent games, the world is just again.

el_rezzo · Posted: Wed Jul 30, 2008 9:44 pm�� Post subject:

Both Ghostbusters and Brutal Legend will be published. Both are high profile games that have gotten a lot of press and I highly doubt that no-one would pick them op for publishing.
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mrbign · Posted: Thu Jul 31, 2008 4:20 pm�� Post subject:

Don't complain about sequelitis if you're one of those that had to get Halo3 at midnight or CoD4, or GTAIV, or FF13, or MGS4. You are the people who cause new IPs to wither and die with your lack of support. HALO3 is the most derivative and underwhelming game of this generation yet it's the highest selling and most played. Wii controller? Gimmicky and not for the hardcore supposedly. (Hard)Core gamers get what they ask for and that's a lack of innovation and tired repeats of exactly the same gameplay and controls.

Fetidchimp · Posted: Thu Jul 31, 2008 4:28 pm�� Post subject:

I think you have that arse about face there bro.

Casual gamers are the ones dictating the terms these days. If it isn't supported by the casual gamer it withers and dies...........
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Jaws · Posted: Thu Jul 31, 2008 5:25 pm�� Post subject:

mrbig has a double edged point though, while I wouldnt call them 'hardcore' per se, titles such as the Halo or Grand Theft Auto series that will sell boat loads regardless of what they contain, portray a strong message to the money men who now quite obviously see the gaming sectore as a goldmine as opposed to the developers that use it as a artistic medium first and money making prospect second.

The problem now is that it seems the money men are outnumbering the artists and as opposed to creating these artforms themselves (an area they have utterly no expertise in), they are using their wealth to slap chains on the artists and control their output simply for monetary gain. How do you do it? Easy. Become a publishing giant and merge with more companies to grow even bigger and corner the market - give developers less options and they will have no choice but to sign on to you.

I will cite Crysis as an example here. Once EA took the publisher's throne, Crytek were more or less in their thrall. EA had absolute control over when the title should be released and went so far as cutting the game in half. Why? The almighty dollar my friends. What we see here with ActiBlizzard is yet another case of the money makers clamping down on art simply because they think it won't maximise their profits. Ofcourse, it is developers and ultimately gamers that suffer. That's the side effect of attention that gaming has received. Technology has improved to bring us some truly amazing titles and gaming is now an acceptable social norm, but at what cost?

In the longterm, it may eventually all boil down to 4 or 5 big publishing companies all monopolising the market and third party titles will all be nothing but shallow husks that are no longer able to hide behind the premise of exciting gameplay and beautiful design.

Cookie · Posted: Fri Aug 01, 2008 12:40 am�� Post subject:

Casual gamers are dabblers who offer no guarantee of repeat business.

Benza · Posted: Fri Aug 01, 2008 12:45 am�� Post subject:

Jaws · Posted: Fri Aug 01, 2008 1:02 pm�� Post subject:

So why has half this company (which ideally has half a say) effectively refused to publish these quality titles?

Smalltime indy developers have always struggled to get games out there because of budgets. I dont see digital distribution largely changing that. That's why publishers are able to make a packet in the first place - they thrive on the back's of successful publishers, like a parasite - otherwise, if digital distribution was such a weight off the shoulders of developers, companies like EA and ActiBlizzard would instantly be losing significant market share.

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