Hirshberg: Shrinking genre killed Bizarre
Not best for Acti's "competitive energies".
Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg has said that the demise of UK studio Bizarre Creations was down to changing market conditions rather than any mistakes on the part of the developer.
"The thing that Bizarre is best at and what they're known for and what their signature is is in the racing world," Hirshberg told Joystiq.
"And the decision had as much to do with our assessment of what was happening to the racing genre as it had to do with anything specific to Bizarre. We just didn't think that was the best place for us to put our competitive energies. The racing genre had shrunk, pretty precipitously."
The decision to axe the veteran developer – along with the cancellation of True Crime and the suspension of Activision's music games business – was part of a broader strategy to focus on delivering quality in the publisher's areas of existing strength, said Hirshberg.
"There are these big, very well established franchises that we would be competing against, fighting for a shrinking opportunity," he noted.
That more focused strategy has led Activision to concentrate its efforts primarily on the modern conflict sub-genre of first-person shooters, where it is currently dominant with Call of Duty despite increasingly noisy competition from Electronic Arts.
"We only want to make the games that we think we can make better than anyone else," Hirshberg concluded.