Atari officially aquires rights to Ghostbusters game

[Queasy]

Good news - Though I'm still baffled as to why Acti-Blizzard dropped this one...

Atari has today officially announced that it has become the new publisher of the next Ghostbusters game.

Rumours suggesting so began last week as the company announced it had made a publishing deal with Swedish developer Starbreeze Studios for the upcoming Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena.
Riddick, like Ghostbusters, was formerly licensed to Vivendi, though that company?s merger with Activision meant the publishing deal had fallen through.

The game will be released next year to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the original movie. Atari says the game is being developed for the Wii, 360, PS3, PC and DS. "Ghostbusters: The Video Game is a fantastic addition to Atari's global line-up in 2009," said Phil Harrison, president of Atari?s parent company Infogrames.

"The title has built considerable anticipation and excitement among game fans for its high quality action and all-out mayhem. There's no more thrilling Ghostbusting experience to be had, short of building your own proton pack."

 

[CrackRabbit]

That is good new, I read an article about it a few months ago. It looks good and they are getting most (if not all) of the original cast back together to do voiceovers for it.
Stealing Phil Harrison was probably the best thing Atari could of done.

 

[Maximilian]

Hmm but atari is like the poor version of EA, they never make any good games.

 

[Queasy]

Originally posted by: Maximilian
Hmm but atari is like the poor version of EA, they never make any good games.

Well, the good news here is that development for Ghostbusters is mostly done from what I understand.

 

[Schadenfroh]

I'm still baffled as to why Acti-Blizzard dropped this one

They only care about Guitar Hero, Call of Duty, and WoW these days.

Hmm but atari is like the poor version of EA, they never make any good games.

They publish some good games, in-house may not be up to par. Shame their parent bought Microprose and screwed them up, that company had talent. Funny thing is, EA is one of the biggest / richest developers / publishers and Atari is doing poor financially, despite near identical tactics. Maybe Atari sucks at trying to be evil?

 

[Queasy]

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh

I'm still baffled as to why Acti-Blizzard dropped this one

They only care about Guitar Hero, Call of Duty, and WoW these days.

Actually, they are saying that they only want titles that they can make multiple sequels of. How can you not make more sequels out of Ghostbusters? Oh look! More ghosts popped up in New York!

Link

Activision Blizzard has explained the reason it dropped a number of Sierra games when it merged with Vivendia.

Bobby Kotick, Acitivision Blizzard boss, said that the dropped games did not exhibit "potential to be exploited every year across every platform".

Such games included Ghostbusters and 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand.

Luckily, these it seems games will still come to light after other publishers stepped in to pick them up. Atari is now handling Ghostbusters, while THQ is set to publish the new 50 Cent game.

"There were a lot of different projects and businesses [within Vivendi] that we identified as not likely to achieve the profit margin potential that we look for," Kotick explained.

"With respect to the franchises that don't have the potential to be exploited every year across every platform with clear sequel potential that can meet our objectives of over time becoming USD 100 million plus franchises, that's a strategy that has worked very well for us."

Activision Blizzard's plan is to work on titles that have the capability to remain in the public's favour ten years from now. This means the company has 15 properties across 70 SKUs planned for 2009, which is a massive 40% more than this year.

These will include new titles in the Call of Duty and Guitar Hero series, as well as film tie-ins such as Transformers, Wolverine, Monsters Versus Aliens and Ice Age.

There's also a Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2, more James Bond spin-offs and another Tony Hawks game planned as well.

Seems like it'll be a busy 2009 for Activision-Blizzard.

 

[bdubyah]

so they dropped it because they couldn't milk it out year after year? wow, that's shows a lot of promise for the future.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

:music: BUSTIN' MAKES ME FEEL GOO-OO-OD! :music: