feisar Posted September 3, 2003 Share Posted September 3, 2003 *cries* One of the largest, most secure, most respected and oldest development companies in the UK had closed its doors.. the Kaboom Studios group (once known as Geoff Brown Holdings) has collapsed. Audio Motion, the No1 motion capture studio in the UK has been sold off to Rebellion, developers of Alien Vs Predator and owners of the 2000AD comic. Attention To Detail, the company behind the rollcage games, firebugs and sydney 2000 was closed yesterday. Silicon Dreams the developers of football franchises for Eidos, Acclaim, Lego, Sega and Take-Two, along with original titles like Dogs Of War closed today.. All thats left is Pivitol Games, the developer behind Conflict Desert Storm and Great Escape (also X-Com and Warzone 2100 under previous names/companies), probably the only reason they are still going is that they are partly owned by the publisher SCi. This year has been a bit of a distaster for the once massive UK games industry which was supposed to be recovering. I think the problem is that there were too many rent-a-ware developers and the loss of the British publishers. America and Japan still have most of their big publishers from the 80's and early 90's.. (Konami, Capcom, Namco, Koei, Taito etc.. and Activision, Acclaim, EA, Take2, Agetec, Midway, THQ etc..) while the UK went through years of mass-consolidation and mass-sellout (loosing Gremlin, Ocean, Virgin, Psygnosis, Domark, Centregold, GameTek, Mastertronic, Mirrorsoft and all the others..) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DomStLeger Posted September 3, 2003 Share Posted September 3, 2003 You're right Feis, that is bad news. You're right about the Publishers too, thats a big problem for the developers especially. Infact the only big british based publisher I can name off the top of my head is Empire. Our computer industry will go the way of the film industry if we loose all our local distributors. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
feisar Posted September 4, 2003 Author Share Posted September 4, 2003 Empire only have around £2 million of funding left SCi are also still there, but have wasted a lot of their money on crap licenced titles that aren't selling and dont have the management structure in place to get a lot of games done (Thunderbirds & Titanium Angels being victims of this). Also Eidos *sigh*, Codemasters and then smaller publishers like Jester Interactive or *gargh* GMX Media.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DomStLeger Posted September 4, 2003 Share Posted September 4, 2003 £2million isn't bad, if they use that money wisely and cancel a few hit or miss titles they might survive... It's sad things are so desperate in the UKs games sector, considering how profitable it is. I take it the US and French giants are crushing the competition as much as their own incompetence is at work? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
feisar Posted September 4, 2003 Author Share Posted September 4, 2003 Empire should ride it out, the continued strong sales of Starsky & Hutch should starve off cut-backs until the next wave of stuff from them.. Jester are a bit wobbly, turning from a developer to a publisher before they were ready.. Super Trucks and Manic Miner flopped, Music 3000 isnt selling as well as the rest of the series did for them.. and everything else is miles away from being completed. SCi after a recent run of success seem to be keeping things rolling, with the great escape going top 10 despite poor reviews and terrible project management, although titles like futurama flopped, they can afford it. Their setup is very different to other publishers, they dont discount or take back unsold stock from retailers/suppliers, have no internal studios to pay for and very low fixed costs (which comes at the price of not having enough staff in place to manage projects very well). Eidos are back in profit after many years of substantial losses. They have enough funding to take them through the next generation but the company has essentially been stripped down for sale over the last few years. The past few weeks has been terrible for them - the backlash over Tomb Raider and the potentual closure of Core Design - The complete utter failure at retail of Republic: The Revolution - The breakup of their long-term agreement with Sports Interactive which could destroy their biggest franchise (championship manager) - Upsetting Free Radical Design who are taking their mutli-million selling Timesplitters series elsewhere in future.. Eidos looks strong in the short and medium term but very shaky after that.. Codemasters are going through one of the worst times in their history in terms of big selling well recieved titles. Series like TOCA, Colin McRae, LMA Manager and WC Snooker have been blighted by poorly coded seqels and new titles such as Indy Car Series have failed to perform. Although they are still are profitable, have secure funding, a strong line-up and seem to have sorted their problems.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Royal Fool Posted September 4, 2003 Share Posted September 4, 2003 How come all of those UK publishers let Worms 3D slip right out of their hands? You'd have thought Eidos or Empire would have done everything in their power to get the publishing rights... but instead SEGA got them. I think that ignorance is partially to blame here, not just financial problems. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marek Posted September 4, 2003 Share Posted September 4, 2003 Actually, when publishers are being a jerk and don't pay their money at the project milestones, developers will start avoiding those publishers. Konami is notoriously bad with payment, and so are a couple of those UK ones. Money also explains why a studio like Valve works with a seemingly so-so publisher like Sierra. Unlike other publishers, Sierra has a reputation of paying on time and using a more hands-off policy in many cases. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
feisar Posted September 6, 2003 Author Share Posted September 6, 2003 Originally posted by Royal Fool How come all of those UK publishers let Worms 3D slip right out of their hands? You'd have thought Eidos or Empire would have done everything in their power to get the publishing rights... but instead SEGA got them. I think that ignorance is partially to blame here, not just financial problems. Worms has been passed around from Infogrames, to Activision, to UbiSoft, to Sega.. Its stupid how after the demise of Ocean no-one seems to be able to treat the series properly, hopefully sega will.. Eidos stupidly let Timesplitters go, its been virtually keeping them going in their Lara-free years, both versions have sold over a million and couldve sold a lot more if they had been bothered to market them properly.. so what do they do? Give the series to activision Eidos also famously cut loose from Pumpkin Studios, who created Warzone 2100, which sold 400,000 and is their higest reviewed game ever.. and after eidos dumped them went on to make the multi-million selling conflict desert storm *gargh* Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Royal Fool Posted September 7, 2003 Share Posted September 7, 2003 I also read something about Eidos possibly losing Championship Manager...? If that's actually true, wow. Think of the money they get from that franchise to keep themselves afloat? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RayfnWillmott Posted September 7, 2003 Share Posted September 7, 2003 They can kiss their little monopoly bye bye, if they lose Champ Man.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
feisar Posted September 7, 2003 Author Share Posted September 7, 2003 they're losing sports interactive after the next game, but still hold the rights to championship manager. i think they are setting up an in-house studio to take over development, but there is no way they can make something as good. Especially considering that sports interactive are walking off with the database and entire code for the games.. with all their licences and major series leaving (sports interactive has been with the company for over a decade) you kinda get the impression that eidos is a sinking ship? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DomStLeger Posted September 7, 2003 Share Posted September 7, 2003 Who ever is running Eidos are a group of morons. Someone said they're trying to sell Eidos off; it's going to become worthless at this rate. Loosing champ man has to be a major nail in the coffin... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
feisar Posted September 9, 2003 Author Share Posted September 9, 2003 More news on Kaboom Studios: Following weeks of speculation, the midlands-based development group Kaboom Studios has gone into receivership, with the one remaining studio - Pivotal Games - being put up for sale. As reported in the past week, two other studios at the group have already been shut down - with Attention To Detail (ATD) shutting down at the end of August, and Silicon Dreams laying off its 55 staff last week. Now UK trade magazine MCV is reporting that accounting and consulting firm Ernst & Young has been placed in charge of the company's affairs, and will be organising the disposal of assets - including the sale of Pivotal Games. Last week it was suggested that British publisher SCi might acquire Pivotal, since it already owns a 10 per cent stake in the company as well as the IP rights to Pivotal's highly successful military combat game series, Conflict Desert Storm; however, this remains pure speculation, particularly as SCi has traditionally not operated any in-house development, preferring to use third parties only. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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