Activision pulls the plug on Radical – Video Games Update
Activision announced today that the studio behind the recent open world superhero action game ‘Prototype’, Radical Entertainment has been shut down. The studio staff left after the reduction will be working on other projects instead of developing their own
games.
Radical Entertainment was a based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada and was founded in 1991. The developers were known for making movie tie-in games such as the ‘Hulk’ in 2003, and the ‘Simpsons: Hit and Run’ in 2003 before they were acquired by Sierra/Vivendi
Entertainment in 2005. After the acquisition, Radical went on to develop games for the ‘Crash Bandicoot’ series and were also behind ‘Hulk: Ultimate Destruction’ in 2005 and ‘Scarface: The World is Yours’.
In 2008 Vivendi merged with Activision/Blizzard and Radical’s status was changed to a first party developer instead of making Indie games and movie tie-ins. After the success of the last two Crash games, Radical began work on a new Intellectual property
(IP) ‘Prototype’ which the developer claimed would be the spiritual successor to their previous smash hit ‘Hulk: Ultimate Destruction’.
Prototype had stiff competition when it came out from Sony’s similar first party game ‘Infamous’. Both games featured an open world which could be traversed by gliding and climbing buildings as a super-human protagonist.
The first prototype did relatively well in the market even though the critics and fans were not too happy with the game. Prototype has managed to sell around 3 to 4 million copies since launch. Pleased with the reception of the first game Radical began working
on a sequel which was released in April 2012. The sequel, Prototype 2, however did not perform as well as the original even though the first month sales were strong.
"Although we made a substantial investment in the Prototype IP, it did not find a broad commercial audience,” stated Activision in an interview to Kotaku. Activision also stated that it had considered selling the Studio off but decided that the best option
was to reduce the staff and have the remaining developers help on other projects.
Even though Radical is no more, Prototype 2 PC version is still due for release on July 24, 2012.
Tags: