Shutting Down a Successful and Profitable Studio? Now That's Irrational...

GamerZines writes:

Yesterday enigmatic games creator Ken Levine told the world that he and 2K Games have decided to shut down Irrational Games, a studio which he himself helped form 17 years ago.

Understandably there’s a lot of confusion out there about why such a successful studio is being put down in its prime and this article is about examining and accentuating just how odd this whole affair really is and what if anything we can gleam from this sad event.

- Comments (11)

DialgaMarine4477d ago

I kind of wonder if Ken Levine had a big role in this decision. That dude's kind of a wierdo like that...

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gedapeleda4476d ago

Kevin Levine confirmed for woman

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MasFlowKiller4476d ago

I actually have some insider Info about this, take it with a huge grain of salt.

But apparently Ken signed up with a huge Talent agency and right after Bioshock Infinite's release Ken asked his agents to work with Take 2 to renew his contract and the studio closing was just collateral damage from the contract talks.

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barb_wire4476d ago

How was Irrational profitable though? 2 games in 6yrs doesn't sound very profitable to me.

There is a piece on NeoGAF that shows 2K were going to close down Irrational Games anyway, all Ken did was hasten the demise.

Also, as a comparison.. in 6yrs Naughty Dog released Uncharted 1-3 & The Last of Us.

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JackVagina4476d ago

Even if they were loosing money they are owned by Take Two witch is the company that owns Rockstar, they just made a billion+ dollars from GTA V so why would they shut them down?

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barb_wire4476d ago

2K made that money from Rockstar, not Irrational Games. Rockstar is a wholly different beast in the gaming industry, as proven by the sales numbers of GTA V.

Bioshock Infinite sold just over 4mil copies, 2K expected (after 6yrs of development) sales of 8-10mil.. didn't even come close to that.

As much as I admired Irrational, System Shock 2 and Freedom Force are still 2 of the best games released in the last 15yrs.. Irrational were an unsustainable business model.

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JackVagina4476d ago

Take Two owns 2K, rockstar and irrational

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Summons754476d ago

Couple things:

1) Both Bioshock games were very successful and critically acclaimed which helps justify that time frame. They even openly talked about how they strived for perfect sometimes rewriting whole scenes 3 or 4 times.

2) Irrational was a 3rd party dev working on multiple systems, they had more challenges in their way. Naughty Dog is a first party dev for Sony and the seemingly only devs who actually took the time to understand how to develop on the Ps3 which a lot of devs had trouble with, after the first uncharted they knew how to take advantage of the system and let's be honest Uncharted isn't that long so the script, scenes, and acting wouldn't take nearly as much time as Bioshock rewriting and longer game.

I get what you're trying to say but there are some huge differences between ND and Irrational.

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maniacmayhem4476d ago

I don't know why you got a some disagrees. You are right. ND has to only focus on the PlayStation, they don't have to write code for their games for it to be easily ported to multiple systems.

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stavrami-mk24476d ago

then they should work faster

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