Activision buys UK racing game developer Bizarre Creations
September 27th, 2007 by supadupagama
Activision announced that it has acquired U.K.-based video game developer Bizarre Creations, one of the world’s leaders in racing games, a $1.4 billion market that is the fourth most popular video game genre and represents more than 10% of the total video game market worldwide.
This acquisition represents the latest step in Activision’s ongoing strategy to enter new genres. Last year, Activision entered the music rhythm genre through its acquisition of RedOctane’s Guitar Hero franchise, which is one of the fastest growing franchises in the video game industry.
With more than 10 years’ experience in the racing genre, Bizarre Creations is the developer of the innovative multi-million unit franchise Project Gotham Racing, a critically-acclaimed series for the Xbox and Xbox 360. The Project Gotham Racing franchise currently has an average game rating of 89%, according to GameRankings.com and has sold more than 4.5 million units in North America and Europe, according to The NPD Group, Charttrack and Gfk.
Bizarre Creations is currently finishing development on the third-person action game, The Club, for SEGA, which is due to be released early 2008. They are also the creators of the top-selling arcade game series Geometry Wars on Xbox Live Arcade.
Bizarre Creations and its games have won numerous industry awards including: Best Racing Game for Project Gotham Racing 2 from the prestigious British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA); the Industry Grand Prix Award from Develop; MCV’s UK Development Team 2006 award; Best Racing/Driving Game from IGN; Game of the Year from OXM and Gamespy for Project Gotham Racing 3; and IGN’s Best XBLA Game for Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved.
As far as I’m aware Project Gotham Racing 5 will still be published by Microsoft, seeing as they have the rights to the Xbox-exclusive franchise developed by Bizarre Creations.