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Exactly how many studios has Activision actually closed this generation? THIS many

Hankies at the ready people, it's a lot

Words: on July 5, 2012
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83 comments

  • BlueScorpion91 - July 5, 2012 4:43 a.m.

    The only brilliant game on that list was Scarface: The World is Yours, the rest was either bad or just not good enough.

  • KA87 - July 5, 2012 4:20 a.m.

    I understand that companies are out to make money, but when so many companies are just buying up others to run them into the ground for profit, it is really concerning. If this trend grows then it will have major consequences for the economy and our future. What will the world be like if everyone was willing to kill the person next to them for the sake of money?

  • Draconilla - July 5, 2012 4:24 a.m.

    Oh you know, there would be wars fought... economies and cultures crushed... it would be a lot like the world we are in right now... Wait a second...

  • BlueScorpion91 - July 5, 2012 4:26 a.m.

    I'm sorry but, are you really putting Activision in the same legue as a Hitman? And I doubt Activision will ever have enough power to change the course of the worlds economy, do you?

  • FoxdenRacing - July 5, 2012 9:07 a.m.

    That's not fair to the Hitman, really. Activision's more of a crazed gunman. To quote The Sniper: "What'll the difference be? One's a job, and the other's mental sickness."

  • Draconilla - July 5, 2012 4:20 a.m.

    Wait, Activision makes cheeseburgers now? What do they taste like? Blood and tears of children?

  • PhantasyPopStar - July 5, 2012 3:57 a.m.

    Activision close studios for one reason. money. They are in the business to make money. If a studio isn't making them any or very little then they have full rights to close them. In a few weeks their name will be forgotten anyway because noone actually cares, and plus, if closing down these studios result in CoD getting better and better than so be it. It's why Activision are so successful. Bobby Kotick has the right idea.

  • BlueScorpion91 - July 5, 2012 4:17 a.m.

    You said it better than I. Lol.

  • Leathersoup - July 5, 2012 8:04 a.m.

    You forget that these studios were thriving before Activision got their grubby hands on them. Activision buys out good studios, forces their "Corporate Practices" upon them until they can't product proper games anymore and then shuts them down. The reason why games like CoD are able to thrive is because they don't actually require any thought to produce. Add Guns, Add Maps. Boom. Done. No work or imagination required. Any situation where people want to create new game-play or anything unique gets shot down because it doesn't fit in with Activision's system of churn out shit that sells with the least amount of investment possible. Unfortunately all that leaves you with is unimaginative regurgitated slop. If you like being fed shit and told it's caviar, by all means keep supporting Activision.

  • BlueScorpion91 - July 5, 2012 8:19 a.m.

    Call of Duty multiplayer = Genius. Nazi Zombies = Genius. Spec Ops = Genius. Them things took skill and innavative thinking to make and make so brilliant. Just because the game's getting rather boring, it doesn't mean that the devs don't want to improve and innovate.

  • FoxdenRacing - July 5, 2012 9:16 a.m.

    The only problem with that is that some profit > no profit, which is exactly what all these closed studios are now making for Activision. This isn't smart business, it's a slow-motion train wreck. They're putting more and more eggs into a smaller and smaller basket. Brand fatigue is starting to set in for CoD. Vivendi is publicly talking about undoing the merger. Acti is working very hard to ensure it has nothing to fall back on, killing on average more than a studio a year. With CoD suffering brand fatigue and WoW in decline, they're setting themselves up for a huge fall. It's madness. Granted, I shouldn't be surprised, given the story of how Kotick got to be Acti's CEO in the first place. A mediocre businessman so incensed at being told 'No, we don't want you running our company' that he performed a hostile takeover gave himself the job anyway.

  • BackwaterRifle - July 5, 2012 7:48 p.m.

    I honestly believe that the next CoD game will be the first step in decline for the series. You look at the perk system, the killstreaks, and it shows the continued growth of the OP killstreaks and unskilled FPS frag-fest. You can disagree with me all you want on that, but when the game releases, and the Multiplayer ends up being a shadow of what it was in recent CoD releases, (i.e. Blops MW2 and 3), most of its fanbase will simply get up and move on, because they can turn to a multitude of other shooters on the market.

  • ParagonT - July 8, 2012 7:44 p.m.

    CoD getting better? Or is it their advertising and marketing getting better? Besides, when a large publisher/conglomerate owns a developer, they have control over what can/will be pushed out. Thats like your mother telling you to go take out the trash, then kick you out of their house because you didn't do it well enough, or people didn't like it well enough although she made you do it knowing there was a chance at failure. That means their jobs and employment is at the whim of the "mother company". The point is, these conglomerate companies make it difficult to compete in the gaming market and thus makes these developers choose to be enveloped into a larger entity (EA, Activision, etc..) just to stay afloat and not have to worry game to game if they're company will fail. But that means they sometimes relinquish rights of choosing what games to develop. It's not all of Activision's and these companies fault fully, but for them to make these absurd choices of publications of games (milking and etc) makes it hard for me to believe that they are so pure of heart as some believe. Lastly, just because money is a drive for these things does not mean that it justifies it. They do bad things, but its us the consumers that doesn't have the resolve and principles to change this system. So in all, its our fault that things must be this way.

  • ParagonT - July 8, 2012 7:52 p.m.

    Yes, those things were "genius" at the time, but everything seems "genius" until your fed it a good chunk of your life. CoD is a trend. Anyways, developers always wants to improve, but its not just up to them. It's up to the funding of their publisher/mother company and how much they are allowed to spend in order to have a large return. The time span also hinders their ability as well, since each developer has two years each to create a game. Although they can add more developers to the team that works on them, if you put too many, it becomes dysfunctional and difficult to piece together. So there are plenty of things that hinder these types of games from truly making big leaps, but they do improve... just not very much at all. The point is that they are not worried about making a "AAA" game, when they can make nearly five times the amount of revenue from making five, from what seems to me, mediocre games with good marketing.

  • BlueScorpion91 - July 5, 2012 3:52 a.m.

    They was closed for a reason. Like Thedigitalg says, Activision are in this business to make money, not friends. Yes it's sad when people lose there jobs, but if the games aren't making enough money then they can't be that good. You've got to think that if these games take 12/18 month to make, but only make a small profit, then it isn't a viable biusness plan, as the next games that these companies make might not even make it to that.

  • PhantasyPopStar - July 5, 2012 3:58 a.m.

    beat me too it! lol.

  • PolarBearsInHeat - July 5, 2012 4:56 a.m.

    ''but if the games aren't making enough money then they can't be that good.'' You cannot honestly believe that can you? Have you never heard of okami?

  • BlueScorpion91 - July 5, 2012 5:14 a.m.

    If it was that good then word would've spread, just like it did with Minecraft. Games like Okami, ICO, Journey are good, but only for people who like niche and can look past gameplay and can take a different meaning from games.

  • CombatWombat101 - July 5, 2012 6:05 a.m.

    "if the games aren't making enough money then they can't be that good." You embody a large part of what's wrong with gaming nowadays.

  • Manguy17 - July 5, 2012 6:38 a.m.

    minecraft spread due to youtube and more importantly the internet at large, if popular figures on the net had picked up and advertised okami instead, it would have been popular. Quality doesn't always equal profit, for example the best burgers in the world could be sold by some unknown restaurant, and yet mcdonalds sell the most burgers.

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