The former CEO of Activision, Bobby Kotick, said the company’s decision to acquire the British project Gotham Racing Studio Bizarre Creations was bad.
The Acalimed Studio based in Liverpool, which was closed in 2011, was better known for its racing games. After developing the first two Formula 1 games in PS1, Cult Classic Metropolis Street Racer in The Dreamcast went on, which was remarkable for its realistic recreations of the cities of the real world.
This would evolve in the Gotham Racing project series, which was exclusive to Xbox and lasted four games, until Activision bought the study in 2007 for an agreement worth $ 67.4 million initial, followed by another $ 40 million if it reached certain goals inside of 5 goals within 5 goals. years.
However, after the purchase, Bizarre would not even last five years, with Activision announcing in 2010 that it was closing the study. His only games launched as an Activision study were Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2, Blur and James Bond 007: Blood Stone.
In a recently recorded interview with the Kleiner Perkins risk capital firm, Kotick seemed to cite the acquisition of strange creations as an example of a bad decision that had been made but could not name the study, its location or its leader.
After Kleiner Perkins (and former EA Coo) Bing Gordon asked Kotick what his trick was to always make good acquisitions, he replied that they were not always positive, in his opinion.
“We really had a bad acquisition,” he replied. “The company that was, um … in Manchester, which made the driving game for Xbox, and was called, um …”
Although Kotick could not appoint the study and was wrong in its location, since Activision did not acquire any other racing developer based in the United Kingdom, it is clear that it referred to strange creations.
“They had a good guy, who directed the day to day,” Kotick continued, apparently referring to the head of study Brian Woodhouse, who says that “he negotiated and delivered the acquisition of activation of strange creations” on his LinkedIn page.
Kotick described him as “a brilliant guy, as a type of McKinsey, was in Strat planning”, referring to the McKinsey 7-S model for strategic planning. However, he added: “There were $ 80 million, and we discarded it two years later. Everything about it violated all our principles. That guy was a expensive lesson. “
In 2011, several employees of Bizarre Creations founded Lucid Games, whose titles have included Geometry Wars 3 in 2014 and Destruction Allstars in 2021.
In 2023, the study announced that it was working with rare, providing continuous support works in Sea of Thieves.
