Activision shuffles studio workloads

26-Apr-2009 • Gaming

James Bond videogame licencee Activision Blizzard has shuffled some of its studio workloads. The changes should give the leading group, Treyarch, more bandwidth to develop its 007 titles.

The two Sierra studios that Activision held onto when it merged with Vivendi Entertainment last year - Radical Entertainment and High Moon Studios - are being put to work on the publisher's Spider-Man and Transformers franchises, reports TVG.

This is according to a Variety article (citing "several sources"), which reports that High Moon will be working on a non-movie tie-in for Transformers (due in 2010), while Radical will be set to work on the Spider-Man series once it's finished up development on Prototype.

This will no doubt help to reduce Treyarch's heavy workload. The developer has been intensively farming Activision's various Spider-Man, James Bond, and Call of Duty games over the last few years and we'd be hard pressed to think of a more productive game studio anywhere in the world.

Radical's experience with the soon to be released Prototype is sure to ease the studio's transition into Spider-Man though, what with Prototype being a sandbox game set in New York City.

High Moon does have previous experience with tie-in games (i.e. The Bourne Conspiracy), although its fit with Transformers is a little less perfect than Radical's is with Spidey. Whatever the case, both studios have released solid work in the past so we're sure they can adapt to Activision's authoritarian development cycles.

The next 007 videogame is scheduled for release in early 2010.