Vicarious Visions being shut down and merged into Blizzard

[Dcubed]

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2021-01-22-vicarious-visions-merged-into-blizzard

Congrats on delivering us the 10+ million selling Crash N-Sane Trilogy and Tony Hawks 1&2 Remastered.  Off you go to the Diablo mobile mines!

Edited January 22, 2021 by Dcubed

[S.C.G]

I mean... I could say that I'm surprised but...

It's Activision-Blizzard.

This will likely carry on until there's only a handful of oversized "AAA" studios left, with Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo buying up the rest for the exclusivity.

Or... everything could get bought by TenCent.

Then all you've got is the 'big' developers who'll carry on doing what they're doing, and the Indies, who will probably do a lot better overall if they can stay afloat and not get bought.

I think we're going to see a lot of smaller games doing better as time goes by, because with a business model that the big companies have, putting everything into a few big projects, if those games aren't really what people want to buy then... I can see a lot of bigger game companies going under as well.

The hypothetical future of the games industry is a dichotomal one, both unpredictable in some ways, and completely predictable in others.

This news falls into the latter part of it, sad but expected.

I did buy Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2 (technically twice) even if it was second-hand, but even then, I didn't end up playing the games much, because as polished as the remasters were, and as fun to play as they were, I can see how even something with the past popularity of this fanchise can get lost in the sea of software after those initial sales, and while remakes of the third and fourth games could have done quite well with the same engine, I wonder if even that would have been enough to save the studio, from what seems to be a pre-determined outcome.

[Aperson]

Well this is a sad but inevitable outcome.

 

They had something of a mixed track record in terms of games and were arguably better at interpreting already existing ideas than making new ones themselves. That being said, they can take credit for doing anti gravity driving in a kart racer 11 years before Mario Kart 8 ever did.

 

Still, they played a bit of a role in my early gaming days, especially in my early teens. I had Crash XS, Crash Nitro Kart and Crash Fusion on GBA during 2003-04 and remember being impressed at the use of pre-rendered graphcis with XS, this was the first time I'd ever seen something like that. They also made the DS version of Downhill Jam which I also played and still own. Admittedly they also did a TON of Movie tie-ins (a lot of Pixar games like Monsters Inc. and Finding Nemo) so their track record is very much a mixed bag but I think there are a lot of gamers out there who may have ended obtaining games made by VV well before the N. Sane Trilogy came out.

 

Ultimately, I have to thank them for both realising the classic Naughty Dog Crash game formula and converting it successfully to handheld and also remaking those same games for a new generation and helping Crash Bandicoot to return.

 

So, this is for you Vicarious Visions:

 

[Hero-of-Time]

Sad and yet predictable news. 

Standard Activision practice. Just look at what happened to a lot of the internal studios in years gone by. Most are now stuck on Call of Duty.

The sad fact is that the likes of CoD and Overwatch bring in more cash thanks to microtransactions and season/battle passes than a standard game ever will. The general gamer dictates where the market goes and they have spoken.

As for the indie/smaller games scene being a beacon of light in this situation, I'm not so sure. Digital stores are so flooded with games now that visability is becoming a real problem for a lot of these developers. The cream doesn't always rise to the top in this case and until quality restrictions come into play I think a lot of these smaller games that are worth playing will continue to be buried.

[killthenet]

It makes no sense at all, they're going to lose a lot of talented developers who don't want to work on mobile dreck, splitting up a successful team that produced a diverse collection of titles over the last few years to make them work on Blizzard properties seems so weird. Activision should be bolstering Vicarious Visions, giving them more resources to add variety to their release schedule - why does everything have the serve CoD and Blizzard?

[drahkon]

[Ganepark32]

Big changes within Blizzard were rumoured last year. IIRC, Activision were wanting them to be putting out more games (similar situation to what is happening at Rockstar with Take Two wanting them to be producing more titles after only 1 new and 1 port last gen). Seems that is where Vicarious Visions has fallen as they've been rolled into to help support Blizzard and other Activision projects now:

Its a shame for VV and especially socks that they won't get to take on new original projects themselves. We always talk about EA demolishing studios over the years, Activision has been doing it too and that walled garden just becomes a bigger, homogenised studio at this point. No doubt there were financial issues to worry about (we can't have Bobby Kotick worrying about not getting his excessive bonuses after all) but yeah, it still sucks.

[Hero-of-Time]

I don't think Activisions finances have ever looked so rosey. Didn't CoD Warzone rake in something stupid like a billion dollars thanks to microtransactions? It comes back to what Sterling has said may times before in that these companies, CEOs and executives aren't happy with a bit of profit, they want all the money, regardless of who they step on to achieve this. 

[Glen-i]

I was really hoping for Tony Hawk's 1+2 to come to Switch. Even more so since @Dcubed gave me all the GameCube entries.