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Activision Kills True Crime and Guitar Hero, Announces “Beachhead”
Activision dropped some serious bombs today during its 2010 fourth quarter earnings call. First off, the unannounced Guitar Hero title set to be released in 2011 has been canned and the franchise’s business unit is to be completely disbanded “due to continued declines in the music genre.” Same goes for Tony Hawk as there will be ”no new skateboarding games in 2011.”
The bloodshed didn’t end there. It was also revealed that the upcoming open-world reboot of the True Crime series in development at the Vancouver-based United Front Games will never see the light of day. The reasoning behind this cancelation is that it “just wasn’t going to be good enough.” Additionally, rumors have been circulating the Twitter-sphere that Activision-owned developers Vicarious Visions and Freestyle Games (DJ Hero) will go through major layoffs and restructuring but this has yet to be confirmed.
But from the ashes of its medicore-selling franchises comes a Call of Duty Phoenix. Activision CEO Bobby Kotick also announced plans to a launch a new studio focused on “the development of an innovative new digital platform and special services for our Call of Duty community.” The new studio will be going by the name “Beachhead” and while the details were kind of vague, I would guess we won’t being seeing full-fledged games from this studio but instead Call of Duty-related services. Think something like Steam or Battle.Net but strictly for Call of Duty. If there’s one franchise that warrants this kind of treatment, it’s Call of Duty.
[Source: Eurogamer, Activision]
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aww man i was looking foward to the new true crime………..
Finally, Guitar Hero has been lame for years.
Thank Jesus!!!!! No more little kids (and adults) sitting around clicking buttons on a miniture plastic guitar……….maybe now they’ll learn to play the real thing.
um kenny, rockband still exists… Is activision even contributing to gaming anymore it seems all there doing is calling shots. companies have to learn to stop banding with this blood sucking organization.
But if people learned to play guitar, we might just get another Hendrix or Clapton, and then there would be talent in music. Oh god, I can’t even imagine it (puts gun in mouth)
@kenny. so when COD dies i should go thank god now kids can go to a real war instead of pressing buttons?
WTF ? I wanted that true crime reboot man !!!
uuuum what?
Guitar Hero 3 was the best one. Myself and about 10,000 still play it on the Xbox. ;) After that, everything went downhill after the releases of Aerosmith and World Tour…
*Shudders* ughh….world tour was painfully retarded.
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