Earlier this week, job listings suggested heavily that Activision was looking to open a new studio in San Mateo, not far from the headquarters of rival Electronic Arts. Now, GameSpot is reporting that two top EA executives are leaving the company to helm the new Activision studio.
Sources report that Visceral Games general manager Glen Schofield and chief operating officer Michael Condrey let it be known to their staff that they were leaving the company for the as-yet untitled Activision studio.
Schofield helped push EA to let Visceral (then EA Redwood Shores) create Dead Space, one of the company's more successful new IPs last year. He had been working to promote Dante's Inferno, the latest title by Visceral.
Visceral was being billed as one of EA's leading internal studios, so we will be curious to see how these departures affect the core game developer.
Update: An EA spokesperson has confirmed to IndustryGamers that Schofield and Condrey are both out but did not provide any word on replacements at Visceral. She noted, "It takes a team of talented people to make a highly-rated game like Dead Space. The teams at Visceral are currently working on Dante's Inferno, Dead Space Extraction and new titles that will be announced at a later date." The spokesperson added that "Production is uninterrupted on Dante's Inferno and Dead Space Extraction. SVP Nick Earl continues to lead the Visceral Games Studio."
2 Comments
July 22, 2009
Ouch, that was a bit of a coup. Admittedly it takes a lot of people to make great games, but the hardest of those to find are project managers who can actually get projects done (and spot good talent).
Major loss to EA.
July 22, 2009
Bummer, this bites.
Still, hopefully they wouldn't come to regret this decision and the reasons behind the move is, as far as I'm aware of, yet unclear.