Disney closing LucasArts is a big shock, but not an unexpected one. Since taking on the Star Wars juggernaut, Disney have made it clear that anything that was in the works prior to their purchase was not high on their priorities list. This list, which currently seems to exist solely of Star Wars Episodes 7 - 9, with anything that falls outside of that area in the Star Wars Universe getting the axe such as the much loved Clone Wars cartoon series and the Star Wars 1313 game from LucasArts. Its a shame that LucasArts had to suffer from this, a studio whose games I have many a fond memory of, spending many an hour insult sword-fighting with Guybrush, hopping across time periods in the Chrono-John, traversing the Land of the Dead and Hitting the Road with Sam & Max. While the most recent Star Wars games from LucasArts haven't been fantastic, and neither have those licensed out *cough* Kinect Star Wars *cough* LucasArts didn't deserve to be shuttered especially with so much interest in Star Wars 1313 and the rumors that it had been realigned to feature the much loved Boba Fett...
Its not the first studio Disney have closed and is just the latest in the long line of studios that have worked on AAA console games that have been shuttered, and highlights Disney's gaming focus: not the core console gamers, but the "casual" audience on Facebook and mobile spaces. It makes sense as the majority of their target audience has their gaming time revolve around these platforms.
As for Activision and High Moon Studios..
After completing work on Deadpool 40 staff members were laid off with Activision telling Joystiq
"Activision Publishing consistently works to align its costs with its revenues – this is an ongoing process," Activision says. "With the completion of development on Deadpool, we are taking a reduction in staff at High Moon Studios to better align our development talent against our slate. Approximately, 40 full-time employees will be impacted globally. We are offering those employees who are impacted outplacement counseling services."
This is Activision, you know the one, the Activision that has the BILLION dollar cash cow that is Call of Duty, the studio that cant afford to keep staff on... it also shows how much faith they have in the Deadpool game if they are laying off staff before release...
These may well be standard resource alignments but it does raise the question that are there not other projects at High Moon that they could have been assigned to?
I would not be surprised to see High Moon being closed by the end of the year... another Activision studio gone?
Now SEGA, you mean your to close the studio that took the Olympic license from Eurocom? you know a game that could have helped them stay afloat and many talented developers in the Midlands still have jobs? And it's another Australian studio to close... not looking good down under.
In a similar vein, Square Enix recently stated that they were underwhelmed by the sales of the new Tomb Raider, which under performed and didn't match sales expectations. Seriously, 3.4 million copies sold in 4 weeks isn't good enough? 3.4 MILLION copies!?! and thats just the physical copies and doesn't take into account digital downloads, you know like on Steam, where most PC players get their games...
Its also surpassed the highest sales of any of the Lara Croft adventures released since 2000, IN A MONTH! and its still selling....
What is up with publishers? Are they not aware that a new console generation is almost upon us? How are there seemingly less and less studios working on console games? Whose making games for the new consoles?
Its hard not to partially agree with what Hugh Binns said as Eurocom closed
"Since 2008, there has been a steep decline in the sales of Console and PC games, which has led to a severe contraction in the number of new games being commissioned from global publishers of entertainment software..."
While I don't think there's been a decline in sales, there has been a decline in the willingness of publishers to greenlight anything that they don't see as automatically selling near 10 million copies. and why is that? It can be mostly attributed to the success of Call of Duty and the insane sales figures and profits it generates, and all the publishers ( or at least the executives) thinking that is the only way to measure a successful game. The games industry is the largest and widest reaching it has ever been, with so many devices capable of playing all manner of games, yet it seems that nearly every week there is another studios shutting its doors.
Where are these developers going? While it can be assumed some are leaving the high crunch, low security games industry behind, a lot of them head off to form indie studios who then gain some measure of success without these massive publishers, either through crowdfunding with Kickstarter and the like, or just through pure perseverance. It does appear that many are going to established studios, at least not what I can gather from my on going job search to try and get back into the industry. There's always the same vacancies listed for the same companies.. you know what guys, if its been 5 months and you still haven't found someone with the perfect job experience and exact previous role, how about you give others a try? There's people out there, talented people, who want to work in the industry, but who have a niche or select skillset that have the desire and skills to expand their knowledge and are able to not just be stuck in a "skills box"...
Any way, games publishers... STOP BEING DICKS!
The future of the industry is far from certain... we could see another crash similar to the one in the 1980s, we could see a slow uptake of new consoles in these recessionary times which means a decline in new games sales, we could see a future where games are able to be accessed from all manner of platforms with most of the data and game stored in the cloud and requiring an "always on" system. Or we could (and hopefully should) see the industry collapse under the weight of executive and middle management and the indie truly rising up and regaining developer led projects rather than bean-counter cash cows milked to death.
source: Joystiq, eurogamer: "Sega to shut SEGA Australia", Tomb Raider "fails ..expectations",