Crispy Gamer News

According to research data from Think Services employment in the video game industry is up 12 percent from just over a year ago. Polling of companies in the United States, the Game Developer Research project found that 44,400 people are currently employed in the game industry - up from 39,700 in 2007. Canadian companies also saw an increase in staffing and number of studios, with total employees up around 17 percent — to 9,500 from 8,100.

In total, the North American game industry increased in size 13 percent, from 47,800 to 53,900 staffers. The numbers also reveal that Canada is becoming an important hot spot for the industry thanks to companies like EA, Ubisoft and many others.

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Blizzard has spent around $200 million to facilitate the operation of World of Warcraft according to data gleaned from the recent Activision Blizzard Analyst Day. That number includes the cost of running customer service, continued development and server costs - a small price to pay for this cash-printing MMO that is popular around the globe. The popular MMO currently has 11 million subscribers worldwide, and has $1 billion in revenue this year. Pretty impressive numbers.

Source: Activision Blizzard Analyst Day by way of QT3

As part of its “Preliminary Announcement of Results for the 12 months to June 30, 2008″ SCi revealed that it plans to rebrand itself as Eidos Interactive, the company’s wholly owned subsidiary. In the section of that document full of doom and gloom entitled “A consistent identity,” SCi’s management said that it is “focusing on cornerstone franchises, which are predominantly associated with the Eidos brand.” Since Eidos is the key focus and real money maker of the company it apparently makes sense to change the name to Eidos plc. Read the entire statement after the jump:

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A volatile stock market driven by woes of Lehman Brothers and other major financial institutions may be driving a massive sell-off this morning, but Take Two’s problems today are a direct result of a a long standing offer being taken off the table. On Sunday Electronic Arts announced that it was pulling $2 billion offer to buy out Take-Two. Today that news is taking effect, with Take Two shares losing $5.91 in early morning trading. That is a 26 percent decline in only a few hours and it is fueled by investors doing exactly what EA has done: moving on. The stock as of this writing is at $15.98.

That price is well below $17.36 - what the stock was being traded at in February prior to EA’s offer to buy the company.

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Electronic Arts was as polite as they could be. They invited Take Two’s management over for some coffee, some fine Italian pastry and Take Two shared a flashy presentation. Apparently, that presentation was not flashy enough as EA has finally given up — for now — on buying Take Two .The company announced that it has decided not to make a proposal to acquire Take-Two and has terminated discussions with Take-Two.

John Riccitiello, Chief Executive Officer of EA, said: “EA is tracking toward a record breaking year. We’re launching 15 new games including award-winners like SPORE, Dead Space and Mirror’s Edge, great new titles from the Sims, new family titles with Hasbro, and the highest quality slate of EA SPORTS titles on this generation of consoles. We’re also expanding beyond our core business with a series of direct-to-consumer launches including Warhammer Online.”

For its part Take Two (in a separate announcement) issued the following statement from chairman Strauss Zelnick: “We remain focused on creating value for our stockholders and our consumers. This has been our goal since EA launched its conditional and unsolicited bid six months ago, a bid which was repeatedly rejected by our stockholders. As part of that commitment, we remain actively engaged in discussions with other parties in the context of our formal process to consider strategic alternatives. We’re especially proud of the success we’ve enjoyed over the past eighteen months and we remain confident in our ability to generate value for stockholders.”

It will be interesting to see if this news has any effect on stock prices in the short term, but for now, EA and Take Two can focus on publishing their holiday line-ups.

Activision Publishing announced this morning that it has acquired UK-based FreeStyleGames. The Lemington Spa-based team previously worked on the music dance game B-Boy. Freestyle Games will become an internal team supporting localized downloadable content for the Guitar Hero franchise. Activision did not disclose how much this acquisition costs the company, but did say that FreeStyleGames executive team have signed long-term employment contracts with the company.

Though it sounds highly unlikely, the prevailing rumor today is that Ensemble Studios will be shut down after the development of Halo Wars is complete. According to a Shacknews report citing anonymous sources, the company is set to close after Halo Wars is done and staff at Ensemble that aren’t working on that game have been laid off. The report says that the team working on Halo Wars has been given extra incentives to stay on board until the game is done.

While this all sounds highly unlikely stranger things have happened in this industry. Why would Microsoft shut down a studio that has been relatively successful before and after it was acquired? The Age of Empires series of games, which have been released on the PC, Mac and DS (by THQ) have made millions of dollars for Microsoft. Perhaps Ensemble, like Bungie is getting ready to become an independent studio again, much like Bungie did recently.

Whatever the truth is, we have asked both Ensemble and Microsoft for an official response. More on this story as it develops.

Source: Shacknews