Meet Loose Cannon Studios

Loose Cannon Studios has opened its doors in Seattle, Washington this week. The company founded by Dev Madan and Matthew Scott, formerly of Sucker Punch Productions, and Ricci Rukavina, who held creative and production positions at Universal Interactive Studios, Vivendi Games and The Walt Disney Company. The founders at Loose Cannon Studios have a collective 40 years of experience in the game industry.

Dev Madan worked as a freelance illustrator and comic book artist for Dark Horse Comics, Marvel Comics and DC Comics. Dev also helped launch Humongous Entertainment and worked at Sucker Punch Productions, where he helped lead the development on Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus, Sly 2: Band of Thieves and Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves.

Technical Director and Co-Founder of Loose Cannon Studios, Matthew Scott has spent over 10 years in the game industry. He has held a number of interesting jobs over the years including Crave Entertainment and Monolith and worked on a number of critically-acclaimed titles, such as No One Lives Forever and the Sly Cooper series, more recently lending his expertise to the upcoming PlayStation 3 title, Infamous.

President and Co-Founder Ricci Rukavina started his entertainment career at Amblin Entertainment - Steven Spielberg’s film production company behind E.T.: the Extra Terrestrial - where he immersed himself in the world of digital filmmaking. Ricci worked on a string of blockbuster film properties spanning Jurassic Park, Alive and Twister. The experience led him through the doors of Universal Interactive Studios and Vivendi Games, where he served as Creative Director, working on the Spyro the Dragon series and led development of several titles including The Thing and Scarface. His experience and success took Ricci to The Walt Disney Company, where he served as Vice President of Creative/Product Development for several years.

Loose Cannon Studios is currently developing an original IP for next-generation consoles that will be announced in the coming weeks. The company is also developing another wholly original IP built upon Loose Cannon Studio’s singular vision to create a new breed of inventive entertainment products. We wish them luck. Learn what there is to know at www.loosecannonstudios.com.

Eric Huynh Joins SGN

Social gaming company SGN announced the appointment of Eric Huynh as Chief Technology Officer and Vice President of Engineering. Huynh joins the company from Vivendi Games (now Activision Blizzard) to help “propel SGN’s progressive social gaming strategy to new platforms and markets.” Huynh has a pretty impressive resume; he was a founding chief technology officer at Gameloft, and the founding CTO of Ubisoft.

SGN develops and publishes games for social networking sites and mobile devices including both iPhone and Facebook. Huynh is responsible for overseeing product development and research of games across mobile and social networking platforms, as well as defining technical standards, quality assurance and delivery protocols to drive the accelerated production of SGN’s games.

Huynh joins SGN from Vivendi Games where he served as CTO of Worldwide Studios for Vivendi Games Mobile. Prior to that, Huynh served as CTO of French video game developer Coktel Studio, and a CTO at Gameloft. Previously, Huynh held the position of Worldwide CTO at Ubisoft, where he lead 300 programmers over nine Ubisoft subsidiaries and had a key role in setting-up studios in Paris, Montreal, Shanghai, Beijing, Barcelona, Bucharest, Casablanca, Milan, Tokyo and San Francisco.

Done Deal: Activision Blizzard

Vivendi and Activision have officially completed the transaction to merge both companies together. The mega publisher will be called Activision Blizzard. In addition to having World of Warcraft, the #1 subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game, under its umbrella, the new company brings together some of the top franchises in gaming including Diablo, Starcraft, Guitar Hero, Call of Duty, Tony Hawk, Spider-Man, Cabela’s, Shrek and Madagascar, and companies like Blizzard, Infinity Ward, Red Octane, Raven, Nerve, VU Games, Sierra and a number of other wqholly owned development studios.

Under the terms of the agreement, Vivendi Games merged with a wholly owned subsidiary of Activision. The Board of Directors of Activision Blizzard consists of eleven members: six directors designated by Vivendi, two Activision management directors and three independent directors from Activision’s board of directors. René Pénisson, a member of the Management Board of Vivendi and Chairman of Vivendi Games, will serve as Chairman of Activision Blizzard. Brian Kelly, Co-Chairman of Activision, will serve as Co-Chairman of Activision Blizzard. The three independent directors are Richard Sarnoff, Robert J. Corti and Robert Morgado. Other Activision Blizzard directors will be Robert Kotick (President and Chief Executive Officer of Activision Blizzard), Bruce Hack (Vice-Chairman and Chief Corporate Officer of Activision Blizzard), Jean-Bernard Lévy (Chairman of the Management Board and Chief Executive Officer of Vivendi), Doug Morris (Member of the Management Board of Vivendi and Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Universal Music Group), Philippe Capron (Member of the Management Board and Chief Financial Officer of Vivendi), and Frédéric Crépin (Senior Vice President, Head of Legal Department of Vivendi).

Read the rest of this entry »

GamersGate Gets VU Games

Paradox Interactive’s online digital distribution channel GamersGate will now carry select Vivendi Universal Games titles including Sierra Entertainment’s Caesar IV, Empire Earth II Gold, Empire Earth III and World in Conflict. The first title to land on GamersGate is World in conflict, with others soon to follow.

You can check out GamersGate by visiting www.gamersgate.com. And for those of you thinking of buying certain Empire Earth games, i’ll just warn you - the latest is pretty damn awful… Just saying.

Report: Crave Entertainment Exits ESA

Not quite making a splash as Activision, id, LucasArts or Vivendi leaving perhaps, but still chipping away at ESA’s credibility, is news that California-based Crave Entertainment has reportedly become the fifth US publisher to leave the Entertainment Software Association since the beginning of May.

News comes from a “knowledgeable source,” who further claims that Crave will still exhibit at this year’s E3 in July.

Source.

Activision Merger Vote Gets a Date

While we all wait for the government to conclude its study on whether or not a Take-Two / EA merger is legal, Vivendi Universal Games and Activision’s deal moves closer towards being complete. In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Activision announced that on July 8 shareholders of note (shareholders of record as of the close of business on June 5) will get to vote on the deal that will see VU Games, its Blizzard Entertainment division and Activision combine into a mega-game publisher.. or not. If the deal is approved the new company will be called Activision Blizzard.

WoW Dominates Vivendi’’s 2007 Sales

In what can only be described as the most obvious news story of the century, Vivendi announced that World of Warcraft has helped drive its games division to sales of $1.51 billion for the year. While the number is mighty impressive, it’’s no shock when Blizzard’’s game moves mountains and occasionally gives heaven and earth the shakes. Vivendi Games saw its full-year sales climb by more than 26.6 percent to 1.02 billion euros (that’’s $1.51 billion) in 2007 on sales of World of Warcraft-related products, mobile stuff and Sierra titles.

All on its lonesome, Blizzard saw its sales rise by 58 percent over the same period last year, raking in $814 million euros ($1.20 billion USD) and covering up declines in Vivendi’’s other game divisions like mobile Sierra and Sierra Online (Collectively these divisions fell 29 percent to $204 million euros [$301 million]).

For the fourth quarter, Vivendi’’s games division saw sales take a 7.4-percent dip to 302 million euros (or $446 million), but Blizzard managed to raise sales by 19 percent to 186 million euros (or $275 million) during that time period.