Bizarre Creations and Microsoft Game Studios' Project Gotham Racing 4

You want to get Capone? Here's how you get him. He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That's the Chicago way. And that's how you get Capone. Now, do you want to do that? Are you ready to do that?
--Jim Malone to Elliott Ness in "The Untouchables"

Having just gotten word that U.K. developer Bizarre Creations has been acquired by Activision, we immediately asked ourselves, who wins and who loses? For the two companies involved, it's obviously a good marriage. Like Katharine Hepburn's oft-cited quote about the mutually beneficial relationship of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers--"Fred gave Ginger class, and Ginger gave Fred sex"--Bizarre gives Activision instant credibility in racing games, a genre where the Santa Monica-based company has been more or less absent (class), and Bizarre gets access to Activision's deep pockets, rather than continue the hand to mouth existence that plagues many independent developers (sex.)

For Bizarre's current publishing partners--Microsoft (Project Gotham Racing 4), Sega (The Club), Sierra (Geometry Wars Galaxies) and Electronic Arts (Boom Boom Rocket)--the impact is less clear. Bizarre has stated that it will finish and support those projects that began under its previous deals, so no-one will be left holding the bag. We doubt that Microsoft will continue the Project Gotham Racing series without Bizarre, given how under-marketed PGR4 has been. It's also worth noting that the franchise was greenlit before the original Xbox launched, back when Microsoft couldn't be assured of widespread third-party support. With third party support no longer in question, Microsoft Game Studios may well choose to either double down on Forza or put its eggs in another basket. With regards to Sega and Sierra, we'll have to wait until the smoke clears to offer any informed speculation on that.

The case of Electronic Arts, however, is considerably more interesting. Dedicated readers of Level Up may recall that in our most recent Monday Morning Quarterback entry, we said the following:

We know that certain people at Electronic Arts have long had Ubisoft in their sights as the opponent they'd most like to take down. But based on the year that Activision is having, I'll bet that they're laser focused on those guys down the Pacific Coast Highway. For much of this year, any smack being talked would have come from Activision, with Guitar Hero III refusing to burn out or fade away; Shrek, Transformers and Spider-Man racking up sales in the movie licensed space that EA once dominated; and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare not only continue to steal mindshare from Medal of Honor, but taking direct aim at EA's Battlefield franchise. However, I fear that Activision may have awakened a sleeping giant. Many of us were skeptical when EA announced Skate, especially at EA Vancouver's choice to go in a simulation direction when the category leader is an arcade-y game. Yet the reviews have been phenomenal, with EA's first skating game in years posting a Metacritic score of 85, compared to scores ranging from 67 to 81 for the various versions of 2006's Tony Hawk's Project 8, despite the latter game's we-make-one-every-year advantage.

Now, it would be silly to say that every move that Activision makes is made with Electronic Arts in mind or vice versa. Business is business, and when a justly acclaimed studio like Bizarre Creations comes up for bid, you jump on it. (As a side note, it's interesting that none of the companies that already have working relationships with Bizarre, including EA and Microsoft, bought the studio.) And we won't read too much into the tiniest of fist-pumps that Activision may have done upon snatching up the developer of EA's Xbox Live Arcade debut Boom Boom Rocket, though based on the reviews and our own playtime, we suspect that when Activision came a-courting, Bizarre shoved BBR into a back room and told it to keep quiet while mummy was entertaining her guests. (We're working blue today, folks.) But with Activision no doubt wanting to get into racing in a big way--Bizarre has already stated that it's working on a driving game for its new sugar daddy--the company's execs must have studied the market carefully to determine what to do with Bizarre once they'd acquired it.

There are a couple of likely courses of action for Bizarre and Activision. The two could go in an arcade direction to take on Criterion Games and Electronic Arts' Burnout franchise. Or they could build a full-on simulation and try to compete with Polyphony Digital's Gran Turismo series. But the latter is a suicide mission, and the former may not be grandiose enough for Activision's feeling-its-oats string of recent success. No, we foresee a third option. We predict that Activision has set its sights squarely on EA's big dog--Need For Speed--as well as Rockstar and Take-Two's Midnight Club. Each of those series, which are both carefully positioned between arcade and sim, have been making money hand over fist in recent years, and Activision undoubtedly wants some of that long green for itself. The resulting tit-for-tat combat, as with the two companies' skateboarding and World War II shooters, promises an escalating series of battles that ought to be fascinating to watch. But for Activision's sake, we hope that its Bizarre new effort to go toe-to-toe with EA--given Activision's history of wildly original game naming, we're preemptively calling this one Desire For Quickness--proves more Call of Duty than its O2 extreme sports line. (Yes, we went there.)