Activision Cleans Vivendi Games House
Activision Publishing announced today its plans for much of the Vivendi Games line-up it inherited when it merged with the company earlier this month. First the company confirmed plans to keep some of Vivendi Games’ key franchises including Crash Bandicoot, Ice Age and Spyro.
The company will also retain two original IPs: Prototype and another “to be announced” title. Activision Publishing will also continue to support The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon - probably because it was too late to dump the franchise at the time of the merger.
However, the real provocative question is what happens to the games the company has not talked about in today’s release: games like Double Fine’s Brutal Legend, the new 50 Cent game, Ghostbusters, and the next Riddick title.
While we wait to hear the fate of those games, Activision says that it is rolling some of its operations into other operations. The company plans to “realign” Prototype developers Radical Entertainment and Bourne developer High Moon Studios into its studio system. The company is also looking closely at
Massive Entertainment (World in Conflict developer) and Swordfish Studios (50 Cent game developer), but is talking about a possible plans to divest both. Finally, Activision is looking closely at Vivendi Games Mobile and Sierra Online, two units it calls “non-strategic,” which it may sell at a later date. That’s four units within the company that it may dump at a at some point for some quick cash, which is very bad news for anyone that works there.
Activision did not disclose whether or not there would be any layoffs at any of these studios in North America. Some European operations have seen a reduction in staff already. More when we have it.
Update: According to Variety’s Cut Scene blog, Activision will be unloading Ghostbusters, Brutal Legend, The Bourne license, and the 50 Cent sequel. One would imagine that the company will shop these projects around to publishers - possibly at a bargain. We’ll see.
