Neversoft layoffs, Vicarious Visions to take control of GH


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I have always felt bad for Neversoft. Their Spider-Man game on the PlayStation is a forgotten classic and a precursor to the free-roaming Spider-Man games on PS2 and beyond. Gun was a critical and financial success that was set in the wild west. Apocalypse (starring Bruce Willis) is a highly underrated third-person shooter that more-than-hints at Robotron. Rather than being known for these titles, Neversoft is known today for their work on the Guitar Hero series.

After Guitar Hero 6, they won't even have that.

According to sources at both Activision and Neversoft, after the developer completes work on technically-unannounced-but-we-all-know-its-coming Guitar Hero 6, the publisher will hand the groundbreaking franchise over to Vicarious Visions. Vicarious Visions has some history with the Guitar Hero franchise, having worked on the Wii ports of every GH console game since Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock. The studio works on the Nintendo DS Guitar Hero: On Tour series as well.

For a little additional creepiness, it was Vicarious Visions whom Activision awarded the Spider-Man license to create Spider-Man 2: Enter Electro.

This spells trouble for the developer. According to the same source, several members of the Guitar Hero team have been laid off (specifically several "note trackers") and there are currently no official projects post-GH6.

UPDATE: Though there have been many layoffs at Neversoft, those who are currently working on the aforementioned Guitar Hero 6 are being kept until their jobs are complete at which time they'll be let go. In layman's terms — April. They're being told today that they'll be fired in April.

UPDATE 2: No more need to call this a rumor…

Source: http://www.bingegame...o-at-neversoft/

Omg what is Activision doing today?

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Omg what is Activision doing today?

The surplus was only 500 Billion instead of 501 Billion this month, so they are trying to do a savings round.

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So, I'm playing Jurassic: The Hunted last night, and realized that pretty much every Activision game I've played recently has been crap, and rumor has it they're making another True Crime game, which will also be crap, and which I'll inevitably play.

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So, I'm playing Jurassic: The Hunted last night, and realized that pretty much every Activision game I've played recently has been crap, and rumor has it they're making another True Crime game, which will also be crap, and which I'll inevitably play.

You have only yourself to blame. :laugh:

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How to people who make such stupid moves ever make it up so high in ladder? Maybe I shouldn't filter my brain speech and just blurt out any idea I get as well.....

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Don't laugh shakey, I work in a Fortune 100 corporation (at least until my job search pans out) and it seems to be common at Megacorp for this kind of crazy stuff. Execs make up imaginary metrics to measure their performance and set up reward systems based on them. Our latest "metric" is customer enthusiasm and we scored off the charts, so we get nice bonuses. Of course we bleed off 40,000 customers a month, but I guess the ones that are left just love us to pieces??? :wacko: I asked what we were going to do when we bleed off all the customers and i got the "stop rocking the boat" lecture. I'm just glad I'm in IT and I rarely deal directly with the business, but it appears the bigger the company the easier it is for crazy people to float horrid ideas.

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In a few years Activision will be crying "why does no one buy our games any more? We don't understand?" I'll have to reply, "no, you sure don't."

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UPDATE: Though there have been many layoffs at Neversoft, those who are currently working on the aforementioned Guitar Hero 6 are being kept until their jobs are complete at which time they'll be let go. In layman's terms ? April. They're being told today that they'll be fired in April.

Excellent way to motivate your employees to produce a cracking game. That said, a lot of it will be finished already so at this point anyone could probably do the final fit and finish.

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