Activision cans The Movies for consoles

In March 2003, the game industry was abuzz with word of a deal struck between mammoth publisher Activision and development legend Peter Molyneux. Under the terms of the deal, Activision would publish The Movies, an ambitious Hollywood mogul sim in development at Molyneux's British shop Lionhead Studios.

At the time, both Activision and Lionhead made much of the fact that the Movies would be released for both the PC and consoles. The fanfare was still going strong a year later, when Molyneux trotted out the game at E3 2004. However, in subsequent months, little was heard about the PlayStation 2, Xbox, and GameCube versions of the Movies. When asked about the non-PC versions of the game last fall, an Activision rep bobbed and weaved, saying, "We haven't made any announcements about the Movies for consoles in a while."

Activision's obfuscation ended yesterday, when, during a conference call with analysts, the company revealed that all console versions of the Movies had been canned. Activision chief financial officer Thomas Tippl didn't mince words about the game's fate. "We canceled The Movies slated for consoles in fiscal '07 due to underperformance on the PC," he said. Despite receiving mostly positive reviews, the game did middling business and was only the 15th-best-selling PC game of November 2005, the month it went on sale.