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Bizarre Creations closing Feb. 18 - Report

Project Gotham Racing, Geometry Wars, Blur, and James Bond 007: Blood Stone shop to be shuttered at the end of the week.

This Friday will mark the end of an era for fans of the racing genre. According to a Develop report, Bizarre Creations will close its doors on Friday, February 18, marking the end of more than two decades of development. The closure was not unexpected, as the studio had been on notice since last November that a shutdown was a possibility. That fate was all but sealed in January, when parent company Activision announced it could not find not a buyer for the studio.

Bizarre Creations first came to prominence in 1996 for its Formula One game for the original PlayStation. In 2000, it released Metropolis Street Racer for the Sega Dreamcast. However, the studio became best known for its work on Microsoft's Xbox platforms, for which it developed the popular Project Gotham Racing series. The studio was also behind the popular retro-arcade game Geometry Wars, which was released for the PC and Xbox 360, with a spin-off hitting the DS and Wii.

In 2007, Bizarre Creations was bought by Activision, for whom it developed two games: last year's Blur and James Bond 007: Blood Stone. Neither title was a breakout hit, so as part of a round of cost-cutting late last year, Activision made the decision to close the studio--which, at its peak, employed around 200 people.

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rick-garza 5 pts

God do i hate activision... always messing things up for everyone.. arent your pockets fat enough?? i think yall should take those billions you made off of cod and reimburse us buyers for spending money on your crappy 15 dollar 3 map packages... and give us PROPER blur dlc soon... a55jacks!

rick-garza 5 pts

[This message was deleted at the request of the original poster]

ricpowell 5 pts

Damn! I was hoping for a Blur sequel. That game is truly addictive, especially multiplayer.

joeingo 5 pts

Damn, I kept hoping for PGR 5, but I guess that will just stay a dream now

DDRManiac2003 5 pts

Damn! Geometry Wars is the best arcade shooter ever, there goes all hope for GW:RE 3. Honestly blur was a pretty good game, I played it like all summer, got to Prestige Rank 3, I mean I guess overall it was a pretty average game, but it was nice with the 20 player online races/ability to tweak perks like CoD. If the game had been properly advertised at all, hadn't come out around other blockbusters, and if they had actually released some kind of DLC or updates blur could've made something happen, oh well.

azureblade89 5 pts

Goodbye Bizarre, I'll always remember Geometry Wars, best arcade games I've ever owned. RIP 1994-2011

Angel_Belial 5 pts

Damn! >:\ Too bad Bizarre got bought up by Activision in the first place.

LondonGamer986 5 pts

Looks like they're gone. There website is down. :(

Twiztid-Maddox 5 pts

To salute Bizarre, I'm gonna play The Club on this day...

Henninger 47 pts

That sucks that no1 wanted 2 pick these guys up. They have talent.

Sergsky 6 pts

I am boycotting all Activision games from now on, including those from Bungie.Big corporations think they can control us, but it's the other way around.

Smashemsmurf 5 pts

BLUR WAS THE ISH I LOVED THAT GAME NO SUPPORT NO REAL COMMERICAL BACKING LIKE THEY DO CALL OF DUTY SERIES

GameBeaten 5 pts

I would think Blur would've did better, but oh well.

howlingmage 5 pts

i hope some will stay together and form a small indie company, that way thay can keep there creative side. and who knows make it big agian someday.

pszone 13 pts

Bobby Kotick says i dont care because i got money in the world this stupid pp buying my call of duty games and makeing me rich. Ring hi sack gutiar hero company because they not selling i dont care if i didnt help them i only helping my pp at call of duty team and yes take two want to meet them becuase they sold lot last year that double im getting if i buy them out so rockstar games will lose out and just me and you if raven dont sell my game this year im going to sack company bye .(phone down ) money money i going to have bath of money and laugh poor pp out there. my say pszone this is him so buy call of duty preowned this year if you want activision to go

LeMeAtOm 12 pts

Thankfully all those talented designers, artists and programmers et all at bizarres studios will enevitably be pulled into other studios and make them stronger for it. Bizarre may have ended as a brand, but the creative force behind the name lives on in them.

pull1nger 5 pts

If you don't buy activision games you helped sink Bizarre. But on the other hand under activision would they have ever made a great game??? RIP Bizarre.

FonikhSoupia 5 pts

@kavadias1981 Agreed! If you don't like Activision, don't buy their games. It's that simple! Too bad for Bizarre as they've made some really good games :-(

thekey 5 pts

@kavadias1981 Well I have yet to buy an activision game (since Call of Duty 2) so Activision doesn't bother me none.(Simply don't buy activision games)

hahamanin 7 pts

i hope ms still will develop another pgr i love the series.....R.I.P bizzare

GunBladeHero 45 pts

I really enjoyed Blur, specially when played online... What a shame. R.I.P Bizarre Creations.

HALFSQUASHED 5 pts

Formula 1 97 is probably the best F1 game ever and also one of the best driving games, period. MSR and the PGR games were good too. Bizarre Creations, you will be missed.

zulwalks 12 pts

(Cont') At least EA and Microsoft makes an effort to advertise all of its games properly regardless on whether it is a very successful series or not

Hillsy_ 15 pts

I remember MSR on the DC, loved that game so much. Driving around London, Tokyo & San Francisco.. music was great too! Then the great PGR series and Blur. Such a shame a quality studio closes when there are far worse studios around. All the best guys!

zulwalks 12 pts

Activision are just a bunch of idiots.......the only reason why those games weren't a huge success was because almost no effort was made to advertise the game.......Trailers for blur and BS came out only just after the announcement andalmost none at all during near the release......i was shocked to see that those games were already released......honestly, is activision too dependant on the COD series (which is dying) and Blizzard (which is plateauing) that nothing else seems to matter??

da_chub 16 pts

geometry wars is one of my fav games of all time. probably the best classic arcade shooter ive ever played. have over 350 hours logged on my Wii(it is my #1 game played) with it and if i ever get a xbox 360, it will be for this game.

kavadias1981 5 pts

Can I make a suggestion guys? If you hate Activision so much, try not buying their games. Just a thought. It's not difficult. You just look at a game that says Activision on it and ignore it. Then you buy a game from a decent producer. You see? Simple.

pokecharm 72 pts

I wonder if this isn't just a reflection of the bad economy finally hitting the video game world harder and harder. When people have less money to spend, they can't pick every title up. It does suck to see another studio go down, but if you compare this to the housing market, these people are doing quite well.

anas510 5 pts

Hate activision......................Love Bizarre

Rasputin2011 5 pts

I don't think it's smart for Activision to put all of it's eggs in the Call of Duty basket.. Solid game BUT with releasing a new one every year along with other shooters Like Medal of Honor pulling up it's socks can be bad news fo these guys.

Andy9Beans 5 pts

Activision are strangling game development. They don't allow their studios any room for creativity and would rather destroy a studio than let it leave the "Kotick Dictatorship". I bet the reason Bizarre didn't attract buyers is because Activision set the price way too high, just like they do with their games and DLC. Anyone who thinks that Activision is an innocent victim and that the blame lies with their studios is a mug. Hopefully ex-Bizarre people will have luck with another publisher... we need fun racing games to counterbalance all of these boring racing "simulations"!!

votc200 6 pts

...Damn man, there has been a ton of game company's closing over the last few months...less and less games to throw into the competition, making the succesful company's even bigger with fatter heads.

kintama88 7 pts

activision treats their own people like disposable spoons. once they are done with them, they'll just throw them away and buy a new one.

lover001 5 pts

yes, yes , blur was just a disaster , bad and dull graphics , stupid gameplay and weak story as usual . I hate this studio , these stupid studios , its developpers have no talent and creativity , such as british only produce and buy to collect more money . why these studios are unable to understand the gamers ? could you tell me why they cant exert effort to learn from their mistakes it should have learnt from Bioware,Crytek and rockstar studios . Activision was agreat but sorry they just working with bad studios

gamingfrendly 128 pts

ACTIVI$ION is F@#$ing it self slowly with actions like thise one i think they will call them selfs call of activison duty cuz really they look like thinking cod will last for ever.

fightingfish18 67 pts

Activision will get what's coming someday... someday....

CyberX115 5 pts

This is a real shame because Blur was a great game and one of the best racing games to come out last year. James Bond 007: Blood Stone was a good game as well. It's always sad when a developer gets shuts down and Bizarre Creations made some truly entertaining and fun games over the years. We'll miss you guys.

NoDzombie 12 pts

BLUR was an awesome game, the fact it didnt sell well is such a shame, especially since it has resulted in this great studio closing down this failure is however just another example of Activision buying something good and screwing it up, it released BLUR at the same time as rival Split/Second but gave it no advertising, i remember everywhere i went at the time i saw Split/Second adverts, i dont think i ever saw a single advert for BLUR, not to mention the fact that Activision were having a distribution dispute with GAME stores here in the UK at the time so they werent selling any Activision published games, these two things combined together really signed the death of the game before it even had a chance, and both were Activisions fault, real shame the studio is being made to pay the price for the publishers mistakes we will miss you Bizarre, you made some of my favourite games, and good luck to the staff in the future........

azurik15 5 pts

Pgr 4's graphichs still better than other racing games.We miss you Bizarre.

jarp01 5 pts

@Heavenboy1991 And what about the Call of Duty series? The single player campain only last few hours and the latest game of the series have had a launching price of $59.99

Heavenboy1991 5 pts

This is what happens when you develop a game that can be finished under 5 hours and sell it for $49.99.

fahim_sinister 5 pts

y r the doing it...james bond bloodstone was a great game.....and activision these days is taking wrong decisions........

Twiztid-Maddox 5 pts

Too bad yall are closing down, Geometry Wars will remain an endless classic! Hopefully yall land on your feet soon...

red-ray 15 pts

Another reason to hate Activision. Farewell Bizarre

Dmg051793 6 pts

Bizarre was easily one of my more-played studios. I play Geo Wars nearly everyday for at least a few minutes. PGR was great fun and Blur was my favorite racing game of last year. Blood Stone was unique and just everything they did was great. Good luck D;

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