While studios like Disney and Warner Bros. are stepping up their video game plans, Universal Pictures is dialing theirs down. The LA Times is reporting that Universal has put all game producing on hold.
Universal is apparently spooked by the bad economy, poor box office results and less than stellar sales of Wanted: Weapons of Fate. Based off of the movie of the same name, the action title only sold about 100,000 copies during its first month of availability. Wanted: Weapons of Fate did not come out in the same time frame of the movie nor the corresponding DVD release.
While Universal is not writing off funding games down the line, the studio is licensing all of their large movie properties to outside publishers. Grin, who developed Wanted: Weapons of Fate, recently closed down.
1 Comments
September 10, 2009
I'd call Fate's sells a bit of a disaster, unless you played the demo and read the reviews, and then you wonder who in their right mind bought it.
What's funny is that, with the exception of WoW (which doesn't count), Vivendi/U had no real revenue producers in their games area, and in fact they were a pretty abysmally managed company according to friends who worked their. Now that they are gone, Universal wants to try and do it again.
And we see what a disaster that idea was...