Team Bondi (L.A Noire Dev) Bankrupt? Studio dissolved.

From gaf:

Thats after this:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...emails-article
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...-seeking-buyer

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Shocking turn of events. Have to say after eating up Sony's $20 million and then taking four more years working with Rockstar and god knows how much more money, it was to be expected. But the game sold really well. Topped the NPD charts two months in a row afterall.

Wow... it sounds like such a poorly run studio, so I can't say I'm surprised. Hopefully the grunts can find better working conditions somewhere else.rragnaar

Actually some of the developers who left the studio after they refused working 100+ hours a week went to the same studio Team Bondi is now merging into. :lol:

I can't imagine they're bankrupt. If Konami could profit from MGS4's sales then I'm sure that LA Noire gave them some profit, and since there's still a PC version coming out, they could make some more money. I think this merger has more to do with the bad reputation the studio got after working conditions were revealed. Here's a source on that: http://www.gamepro.com/article/news/221676/rumor-l-a-noire-dev-team-bondi-merging-with-film-studio-to-avoid-killing-next-game/

[QUOTE="rragnaar"]Wow... it sounds like such a poorly run studio, so I can't say I'm surprised. Hopefully the grunts can find better working conditions somewhere else.S0lidSnake

Actually some of the developers who left the studio after they refused working 100+ hours a week went to the same studio Team Bondi is now merging into. :lol:

Honestly, I couldn't even really see a L.A. Noire 2 coming out anyway. I mean I guess they could do it but...

[QUOTE="S0lidSnake"]

[QUOTE="rragnaar"]Wow... it sounds like such a poorly run studio, so I can't say I'm surprised. Hopefully the grunts can find better working conditions somewhere else.kris9031998

Actually some of the developers who left the studio after they refused working 100+ hours a week went to the same studio Team Bondi is now merging into. :lol:

I can't imagine they're bankrupt. If Konami could profit from MGS4's sales then I'm sure that LA Noire gave them some profit, and since there's still a PC version coming out, they could make some more money. I think this merger has more to do with the bad reputation the studio got after working conditions were revealed. Here's a source on that: http://www.gamepro.com/article/news/221676/rumor-l-a-noire-dev-team-bondi-merging-with-film-studio-to-avoid-killing-next-game/

minh800

Rockstar owns the L.A Noire IP. They published it. They definitely got a huge chunk of the cash.

[QUOTE="minh800"]

I can't imagine they're bankrupt. If Konami could profit from MGS4's sales then I'm sure that LA Noire gave them some profit, and since there's still a PC version coming out, they could make some more money. I think this merger has more to do with the bad reputation the studio got after working conditions were revealed. Here's a source on that: http://www.gamepro.com/article/news/221676/rumor-l-a-noire-dev-team-bondi-merging-with-film-studio-to-avoid-killing-next-game/

S0lidSnake

Rockstar owns the L.A Noire IP. They published it. They definitely got a huge chunk of the cash.

Is it just me or is it ironic how rragnaar is in your sig and you say he should step down, while at the same time you two are talking RIGHT now?kris9031998

On topic: I guess I should be amazed at the fact even a million+ seller can't keep a dev study afloat, but then again, this one game had an abnormally long dev cycle and apparently came from a studio with big mismanagement issues.

Expected. Brendan McNamara ran that studio into the ground.

Weird that they couldn't stay afloat even after the game topped the NPD charts. You'd think that would have been enough to keep them alive. All those management issues must have been more costly than we thought.

[QUOTE="kris9031998"] Is it just me or is it ironic how rragnaar is in your sig and you say he should step down, while at the same time you two are talking RIGHT now?SteelAttack

On topic: I guess I should be amazed at the fact even a million+ seller can't keep a dev study afloat, but then again, this one game had an abnormally long dev cycle and apparently came from a studio with big mismanagement issues.

The guy above you may have a point. Rockstar refused to publish their next game, and they simply couldnt find another publisher. Sony's definitely not going to work with them after losing $20 million.

I'm with Rag on this one. It sounds like to me there was a lot of trouble and drama going on during the development of L.A. Noire and after reading this, I feel that those factors were primarily responsible for shutting down the developer. It's too bad though...I keep hearing how great L.A. Noire is.

It's definitely plausible...they could go bankrupt very quickly if they couldn't find a publisher for another project. Once LA Noire was finished they would no longer be receiving money from Rockstar, and they wouldn't start making royalties until all of their development costs were made back (and I'm betting those costs were pretty damn high). So they would just be burning money until they had another project going, and I doubt they would have enough money in the bank to do that for very long.

Either way it sounds like the project was mismanaged from the start, so I doubt anybody is going to cry any tears for Brendan McNamara.

I can't say that I'm surprised. The game played like it was the result of a project that became broken and had to be pieced together into something that could be sent to market. I was disappointed by L.A. Noire, too much unrealized potential and bad gameplay.

Now if only someone could rework the game to fix all of its problems and release a revised version that actually lives up to the hype...