Bizarre's Wilson: 'perfect storm' led to studio's death

We know the REAL killer... piss-poor marketing.

Don't bring bad news up anymore. It was sad a week ago and it's still sad. Hopefully the devs can at least find work with another studio

So sad.

I do have a very high appreciation for "middle ground" games and I hate to see that so many gamer's are focused only on the big titles. I guess this is normal since most core gamers are on 360 and there just isn't a huge amount of variety there. This isn't to start any flaming, it's just a fact that when most people on 360 are looking for a game, they want a shooter or a trusted IP. Most 360 owners (once again, I'm talking the type of person that never goes to sites like Joystiq), are unwilling to try new things, like Blur.

It's a damn shame too cause blur was a fantastic game wish more people bought it online is still really fun

A perfect storm of making two crappy games, followed by making a deal with the devil. They did not get the proper support from Activision. They had their disagreements with MS, but I find it hard to believe it was as bad as Activision.

Releasing the game the same time as Split Second was suicide. And honestly the Blur beta did the game no favors either. Split Second is by far the more fun game. Of course neither game holds up to the insanely fun Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit. I just wish a new burnout had been created as that game has the fun crown, but it's starting to show it graphical age. (Test Drive 2 sucks by the way).

Personally, I don't buy new releases with very few exceptions until they get down in price, and for me to wait for a game to come down in price, it has to be something that has kept my attention since its launch.

Simply put, games launch too expensive, which I suspect is why many people end up not buying the games at all. Gamers like me see a game, think "looks kinda neat, but I'm not paying $60 for that", and push it out of their minds. By the time that game comes down in price I'm (we're?) already enjoying something else.

If the games would launch cheaper they'd grab more people off the bat. With the way the industry works, there's only a small window of time for people to be interested in one game before it more or less falls into obscurity (not counting obvious exceptions, such as the "evergreen" games that keep selling years after they launched). If they don't capture the attention of the people at the launch by having a good price, it ain't gonna happen.

The day of quietly launching a game at full price and expecting the game to break even, much less make a profit, are long gone I'm sorry to say. Publishers need to start either making a bigger push to market games, launch games at a cheaper price, or a combination of both.

I frequently "take a risk" on lower-priced downloadable titles.

But like most gamers, I don't usually "take a risk" on $60 retail titles that aren't getting rave reviews. And why should we? $60 is a lot of money to spend, and it's very disappointing to blow that kind of cash, and find out that you don't enjoy a title.

If your business model requires your customers to "take a risk" on your product, then digital download is the way to go. There's no reason that an action racer could not have been packaged as a $15 XBLA/PSN title.

@tabarnakiim

I'm glad I'm not the only person that thinks bioware games a strange looking

Risky things should just be smaller and downloadable in these times.

Retail titles should be less frequent and higher quality. There is a sea of stuff out of there and it's extremely hard to tell what is good and what is not a lot of the time.

I think publishers really need to re-evaluate their approaches to all of this very soon.

Blur was the best racing game released last year, by FAR. Split/Second was fun for about 3 hours, then it became the same schtick over and over. Blur STILL has a dedicated racing community on all three platforms, and it was a tournament game at PAX Prime. There's a lot of blame to be distributed, but it was a new IP being released at the same time as ModNation Racers, Split/Second and worst of all Red Dead Redemption. It was just really bad timing. It's a shame too, because as much of a "finish and move on" trophy earner as I am, I still go back to Blur for extended periods of time. They crafted a fantastically wonderful Greek Tragedy.

I often wonder about the reason(excuse) given that retailing a game(Blur) in the same release-window as other games is "suicide" for said game.

If a game is truly of quality, it should be able to stand on its own merits.

Did anyone ever look at the Bizarre Creations' forums after PGR3, PGR4, Boom Boom Rocket, The Club and Blur were released?

The reception for PGR3 was quite good(if a little mediocre) because the consumers of PGR2 bought into the PGR3 release expecting game-making features to return in a graphically improved form. That didn't happen and it had nothing to do with Microsoft.

Leading up to PGR4, Bizarre made claims that the fans were acknowledged and the development time was such that PGR4 would erase any concern that BC could deliver a follow-up to PGR3 along the lines of the improvement from PGR to PGR2. That didn't happen.

Don't take my word for it. Check the BC forum while it still remains online.

The remaining titles were new IPs that simply didn't have the momentum to carry them. They failed to garner the interest required to achieve significant sales numbers.

And then there was Blur. Blur the Beta versus Blur the Retail release. Again, look at the forums to get an idea of how well the two versions were received by the relatively small percentage of consumers who were visiting the Blur forums.

Gareth can cite publisher, marketing and other external forces, but the truth is, the overall depth, quality and polish of BC's titles following PGR2 were not up to standard. A standard that BC set themselves.

Although I own a copy of PGR4, I would, to this day, prefer to dust of my old Xbox and enjoy PGR2. There's a reason for that.

The lightning bolt that Bizarre Creations once held aloft in their fist had since burned out.

I gotta be Honest Activision Killed Them But I Wanna Put my Personal Thought's into it

I think that the Beta should have been open to the PS3 and 360 Community not just the 360 cause then i think if it was open beta with a huge amount of keys and not just for ( PS PLUS Members ) then more people would have a better taste of BLUR but the $20 deal that was awesome but i couldn't get a copy. so i thought it may have been selling well, but when i saw it in action i just didn't have any interest in it

As for Vanquish i thought it wasn't too bad .. i t was nice looking i don't know anything about the story and the demo wasn't OMG THIS IS FUN and it wasn't wow this is boring or omg this is horrible garbage... I Tried the Vanquish Demo and Thought if I'm buying this it has to be a cheaper price. cause for what I'm playing it's too expensive ( at the time this game came out i think i saw it go for $64.99 here in Canada and our sales tax is 13% at the time if not then it bumped back up too 15% ) but BLUR i got no interest in Vanquish i have some interest in and still don't have it but i will get it... sorry Bizzare but i just don't give a crap about BLUR

Blur is just a bad idea. I played the demo, and there's just nothing there.

Mario Kart without personality, pass.

Vanquish actually sold surprisingly well.

Enslaved, Alan Wake, and Vanquish all NEED sequels.

Blur came out at the wrong time. I finally tried the game only recently and was rather impressed. It was actually pretty fun to play. I sitll say coming out with a new driving game during the same timeframe as another driving game only confused people.

Blur, like many other games that came out at around that time, was a risky venture. Driving games like that are a slightly more niche market than say, your typical shooter game.

I picked up Blur b/c I thought the idea was good (mario kart for adults), but I have yet to even have time to play it more than 30 minutes. And given that the majority of gamers are younger and without money, it's not entirely surprising that Blur had a hard time selling in higher volume.

I also do think that the marketing might've been a bit confusing, in terms of distinguishing itself from "Split/Second", which came out near the same time. Had I not taken the time to read about it, I might've passed up Blur.

Some ideas to make money-

Don't market your games as being better than Mario Kart. That's a silly mistake.
Don't limit your market. It saddens me that studios can close when their games aren't available for as many machines as they could be on. For example: no Geometry Wars 2 on Steam? That's just stupid. It would have been a huge hit.
Don't make your PC versions worse than console versions.

It's a shame they've closed down.

It sucks but they honestly did not make good games other than Project Gotham Racing.

While I admit some studios are capable of making a multitude of different IPs, very few have the talent and resources to do so.

Its why the most successful developers generally stick to making one genre, or one type of game like Bungie/Halo, Infinity Ward/CoD, Polyphony/Gran Turismo, and etc. they stick to what they're best at and they stay in business.

I can honestly only think of a few like BioWare and Rockstar that are capable of developing different IPs with success, and even they're games are from the same genre.

Here's an idea...why didn't they try breaking the damn mold and sell the game for less than $60 on the onset?

That's why I LOVE Sony, because they dare to try new IP's when other developers/publishers doesnt dare, because, everyone knows that its safe to bet to something already well established, but real men, are those that dare to try new things without fear at loss.

Thanks AGAIN Sony, you bring us new IP like Heavy Rain, Little Big Planet, 3D Dot Game Heroes, and many other with innovative elements and even dont sell a lot, you have the ball to take and publish them.

Here's an idea, don't sell out to a larger company that shut your ass down unless you outsell Gears of War.

I love racing games, but just did not like the demo for Blur. So maybe it's not always a case of players not wanting to take a risk on a new game. Maybe it's just that your game wasn't very good.

Shame, I love PGR4. Would have killed for PGR5.

If I really wanted to play a racing game on drugs, I'd provide my own drugs.

The reason Blur failed is Activision, Sony, and Disney all released their racing games within one week of each other, and competed directly against a Rockstar game and a high profile first party Microsoft game.

All of those games canabalized each others' sales except Red Dead, which became one of the best selling games of the year.