June 28, 2012 by Paul Curtin
Sadly, yet another development studio seems to be having its doors closed today. After Prototype 2‘s weaker sales couldn’t even amount to half of the original, which sold over two million copies, Activision looks like it will be closing down the developer behind both games in the Prototype series, Radical Entertainment. The news broke via the studio’s ex-Senior Audio Direction Rob Bridgett, who tweeted: “RIP Radical Entertainment 1991-2012” an hour ago.
There will be no new games from Radical with only some employees staying with parent company Activision to help support existing projects. Activision also issued the following statement today regarding Prototype 2’s poor sales resulting in Radical most likely being closed down:
“Although we made a substantial investment in the Prototype IP, it did not find a broad commercial audience. Radical is a very talented team of developers; however, we have explored various options for the studio, including a potential sale of the business, and have made a difficult conclusion through the consultation process that the only remaining option is a significant reduction in staff. As such, some employees will remain working for Radical Entertainment supporting other existing Activision Publishing projects, but the studio will cease development of its own games going forward.”
Personally, I’ve always enjoyed the Prototype type series, even more so than its rival Infamous. The last game was clearly an improvement over the original and deserved to sell better. It’s a sad day today in the industry and not a good sign of the future when a studio sells close to a million copies of a game and has to cease production on new games because their work isn’t considered good enough or at least profitable enough.
