What the hell? This was totally unexpected. Bizarre Creations is an awesome studio. :(

" FU ACTIVISION! "

Seriously! Who at Activision thought it'd be smart to release a new IP in the same window as Split/Second and ModNation Racers? They could have waited 1 month and been completely clear of all other racing competition, or released it a month earlier with promises of a free DLC pack with a bugfix patch to hit right before Split/Second. "

Wasn't matter of IF Activision would shut down Bizarre, but WHEN. Its always sad to see a racing game developer go.

Sell your soul to the devil and this is what happens. Look forward to a similar fate Bungie.

:( I love Geometry Wars!

Ha! There's the obligatory topical fake twitter account: http://twitter.com/BobbyKotickCEO

This is a disgrace

" Just furthers my disgust for Activision. "

  
doing some googling it appears as if its been a long time since anything they did was a financial success.  bomb after bomb in terms of sales. 
  
didn't see the figures for james bond but im going to go out on a limb here and say it was no Halo.
 
in short, you can't blame activision. 
condolences to those who lost their jobs.

" Kotick'd "

Hopefully from the ashes a new studio to continue the PGR franchise will arise. MS still owns the PGR license and the entire tool chain

The point here is that Bizarre made totally awesome games before being taken by Activision. PGR !!! Geo Wars !!! Activision take control and Bizarre takes the flak for their incompetence. Was it Bizarre or Activision for example who chose to release Blur the exact same time as Split/Second, a game totally competing for the same market. That's incompetence imo.

should have maybe stuck to PGR games.

I loved PGR series and Blur. Now I really feel bad for buying BLOPS.

This is really messed up.

It's getting to the point where Activision is the new EA. They are constantly making it harder and harder to like them, running their companies like god damn sweat shops. I pray to god, or whoever that Microsoft comes in and saves BC, because its a great company, with potential when in the right hands.

" I'd like to again remind everyone who bought Black Ops that they are part of the problem. "

ACTI-ASSHOLES. Fuckers. YOU'RE REDUNDANT!

Well that sucks.

" The point here is that Bizarre made totally awesome games before being taken by Activision. PGR !!! Geo Wars !!! Activision take control and Bizarre takes the flak for their incompetence. Was it Bizarre or Activision for example who chose to release Blur the exact same time as Split/Second, a game totally competing for the same market. That's incompetence imo. "

Activision's mom is redundant.

"   doing some googling it appears as if its been a long time since anything they did was a financial success.  bomb after bomb in terms of sales.   didn't see the figures for james bond but im going to go out on a limb here and say it was no Halo. in short, you can't blame activision. condolences to those who lost their jobs. "

This is awful news.

I had heard that sales over the first two weeks of a game's release are seen as determinant of its overall success. This must be proof-positive that such an understanding is in practice, since its been two weeks exactly since the release of Jame Bond 007 : Blood Stone.

Anyone else think it's really suspicious that they couldn't find a way to advertise Blood Stone, yet this is the company that has an extremely aggressive advertising campaign for every single Guitar Hero game that comes out? 
 
I get the feeling that Activision wanted to set Bizarre up for a shut-down... 
 
Activision: "Hey, I know we made you release a new racing IP alongside two other racing IPs in May, but we'll make it up to you by letting you make a James Bond game that'll come out alongside one of the most hyped games on the Wii...ANOTHER JAMES BOND GAME!" 
 
Bizarre: "Well, okay, I guess we can do that if we have to. But, uh, you haven't announced this game yet...are you going to advertise it or anything?" 
 
Activision: "Pfft, no! We've got GoldenEye, Black Ops and Warriors of Rock to advertise! Don't worry, you guys'll do fine." 
 
Bizarre: "Uh..." 
 
Yeah, Activision definitely fucked them. Did they do it on purpose? I'll let you decide...but the answer is yes. 
 
And if this fucks with Geometry Wars, Kotick is going down.

" I'd like to again remind everyone who bought Black Ops that they are part of the problem. "

Well this sucks.
'nuff said.

You can all talk as much trash about Activision as you want but.. 
How many of you bought Call of Duty: Black Ops? 
How many of you have running WoW subscriptions? 
 
I have neither. 
This company can burn in hell. And don't tell me "Well don't blame Treyarch". Really? You think Call of Duty will end with Treyarch? Hell no. It will just get handed off to someone else until it dies just like Tony Hawk and Guitar Hero did.

" I went straight to metacritic to look at the over-score on Bloodstone. This is really odd: 1up gave the game a B-, and metacritic translated that as a 67. How does that figure? Wouldn't a B- be an 80? "

" I'd like to again remind everyone who bought Black Ops that they are part of the problem. "

Guys, I'm soooorry to have to break the news to you, but I've truthfully been blessed with this knowledge. 
 
If you drive a car, the oil spill is your fault.  Way to fucking go, sheeple!

I don't play WoW (haven't in over 4 years and even that was for less than 4 months) 
and the last activision game I bought was MW2. 
 
If I pick up CODBLOPS it'll be in a used bin.

Why is Activision ruining everything? :(

There were definitely some talented people at the studio, but I feel like they tended to make some odd decisions sometimes.  Like all the shitty Kudos/etc races they forced you through in PGR4, or the fact that they put out a public beta (demo, really) of Blur with a completely broken turning model that favored scraping the sides of the walls over actually trying to turn.  Guys, it's a racing game.  Making corners is kind of the basis of the exercise.  Maybe test that at some point before releasing it to the public?  The Club was kind of an oddity that didn't really communicate its intentions well on first impression.  They probably should have gone with a more abstract visual style if they wanted to emphasis the score and chaining aspects instead of people trying to play it as a third-person shooter.  Basically, I think Geometry Wars has been their only entirely successful franchise from a design standpoint for some time.  That's never a good sign for a developer with several hundred people on staff.

Activision continues to give me more reasons to continue my boycott of their games

Bobby Kotick you mother fucker

*sigh*

I've never been a fan of driving games but Blur always looked really sweet and a nice, original take on the kart racing subgenre. Introducing tax subsidies usually isn't my favorite policy initiative, but if the UK games industry doesn't have enough juice to keep even a well-regarded developer like Bizarre going then it really is true that the British scene has seen better days and needs some government support ASAP...

Wow, didn't expect that as they've been doing quality work for quite a while before Bloodstone. It's things like this that make me not want to work for Activision. Best of luck to everyone who was @ Bizzare Creations. 
 
Edit: After thinking about it for a bit, it seems that between Infinity Ward/Treyarch/Blizzard that they are rolling in enough money that they should give their other studios some leeway or at least give them breaks away from some franchises to work on something else (instead of closing them outright. Activision should at least realize that not every studio is going to hit IW/Treyarch/Blizz levels of success almost overnight.