Bobby Kotick Says Acquiring Project Gotham Racing Studio Bizarre Creations Was Bad for Activision

by
William D’Angelo
, posted 5 hours ago / 563 Views

Former Activision CEO Bobby Kotick in an interview with venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins stated the acquisition of Project Gotham Racing developer Bizarre Creations was a bad decision for the company.

“We actually had a bad acquisition,” said Kotick (via VideoGamesChronicle). “The company that was, um… in Manchester, that did the driving game for Xbox, and it was called, um…”

Kotick couldn’t think of the name of the studio and the location was wrong, however, Bizarre Creations was the only studio Activision acquired based in the UK.

“They had a good guy, who was running the day-to-day,” Kotick continued. “[He was] a brilliant guy, like a McKinsey guy, he was into strat planning. It was $80 million, and we wrote it off two years later. Everything about it violated all our principles. That guy was an expensive lesson.”

Bizarre Creations was founded in 1988 as Raising Hell Software and was later renamed in 1994. The studio was best known for developing racing games like the Xbox exclusive Project Gotham Racing, as well as Geometry Wars.

The studio was acquired by Activision in 2007 and would be shut down in 2011.

A life-long and avid gamer, William D’Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Bluesky.

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