Neversoft Quits Tony Hawk

After running the Tony Hawk series into the ground, Neversoft has said they will not make any more Tony Hawk games. Instead, they will be focusing their efforts into running the Guitar Hero series into the ground. The Tony Hawk series is not dead, however. Another developer will be taking over the series.

Neversoft created the first Tony Hawk game in 1999 and has gone on to release at least nine games in the series. (It gets a little confusing since there's lots of remakes for various systems.)

A new Tony Hawk game, Tony Hawk Adrenaline, is scheduled to be released in Fall 2009. Rumor has it that the new developer Robomodo will be making the series now.

Welcome Back 50 Cent!

50 Cent: Blood in the Sand has been brought back to life. The game was originally dropped when Activision and Blizzard merged. Now THQ has announced that they have picked the game up and will publish it.

Nothing like playing a rapper who fights extremists in the Middle East. Extremists who stole his crystal skull that he got as payment for a benefit concert?

Update on Activision Blizzard Games

Earlier in the week, reports emerged about what games Activision Blizzard had confirmed as keeping after their merger with Vivendi Games. This list was a little disturbing to some gamers who didn't see their anticipated game in the list of five games. I held off on blogging about it until some more information came out/was confirmed.

The five games/franchises which are confirmed as still on the way are:
- Crash Bandicoot
- Ice Age
- Prototype
- Spyro
- an unannounced title

I think Prototype looks good, and the other games are guaranteed to make a certain amount of money(other than the unannounced title, of course). But many noticed some glaring omissions. Two of the big names missing are Ghostbusters and Brutal Legend.

Sony Pictures Entertainment has the license to the Ghostbusters game and has officially confirmed that they will still get the game published. The real question is who will publish it and will this affect which systems the game releases on. Sony is also using this development to delay the game's release until 2009 so it can coincide with the 25 year anniversary of the movie Ghostbusters.

Double Fine is the developer behind Brutal Legend, and the game is being helmed by Tim Schafer, made famous from his work on Psychonauts. They say that they will still put out Brutal Legend and are close to signing with a new publisher.

The Bourne license was also cut by Activision Blizzard so all of the gaming rights revert to Ludlum Holdings who have stated that they plan on making more Bourne games in the future with a different publisher.

50 Cent: Blood on the Sand was also cut from the Activision Blizzard lineup. So far, developers have been pretty silent on the fate for this game. Normally, I wouldn't care about this game because the first one seemed like it sucked, but there was actually some independent reviewers who had some good things to say about what they saw from this game. Still, if it dies, I won't shed any tears.