Former Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick has been speaking about his time in the video game industry recently, and while he's quick to recall that GoldenEye on Wii almost didn't have guns in it, he struggles to recall the name of one of the UK's most respected (and now defunct) game studios (thanks, VGC).
Discussing the topic of acquisitions, Kotick appeared to offer the example of Bizarre Creations, the Liverpool-based studio—responsible for Sony's F1 games, Metropolis Street Racer, Project Gotham Racing, Blur and Geometry Wars—that Activision snapped up in 2007 for $67.4 million.
"We actually had a bad acquisition," Kotick said on the Grit podcast. "The company that was, um… in Manchester, that did the driving game for Xbox, and it was called, um…"
Amazingly, he's unable to remember the name of the company, which will do little to endear Bizarre Creations fans to the man who, ultimately, will have had a say in the decision to shutter the studio in 2010.
After being purchased in 2007, Bizzare Creations would release Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2, Blur, and James Bond 007: Blood Stone. Blur, in particular, was a commercial flop, while Blood Stone was met with a mixed reception.
"They had a good guy, who was running the day-to-day,” Kotick adds, which VGC feels is a reference to studio head Brian Woodhouse. While praising Woodhouse for being "a brilliant guy" who was into "strat planning," Kotick was negative about the deal in general.
"It was $80 million, and we wrote it off two years later. Everything about it violated all our principles. That guy was an expensive lesson."