Warner Bros. acquires majority stake in Rocksteady

[Alucard]

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6251719.html?tag=latestheadlines;title;1
By Mark Walton, GameSpot UKPosted Feb 23, 2010 10:00 am PTMedia conglomerate buys into Batman: Arkham Asylum developer to further expand its gaming holdings; studio to be charged with other WB IP.

Today, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment announced that it has acquired a majority stake in Rocksteady Studios, the London-based developer of last year's critically acclaimed Batman: Arkham Asylum. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The game, which was published by Eidos (now part of Square Enix), has sold more than 2.63 million copies since its August 2009 debut.

The move follows a string of games-based acquisitions for Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. Most recently, it purchased beleaguered publisher Midway in a $49 million deal. WBIE also purchased Traveller's Tales, developer of the Lego Star Wars series, after receiving a $500 million investment from Abu Dhabi Media Company in 2007. In early 2009, the publisher also picked up Death Tank developer Snowblind Studios, which underwent a round of layoffs in January and is currently working with the Lord of the Rings license.

"We have been looking to increase our development capacity, and as a high quality games development Studio, Rocksteady definitely fits that strategy," said Josh Berger, WBIE UK's president and managing director. "With the ground-breaking release of Batman: Arkham Asylum, Rocksteady has really helped reinvigorate the Batman franchise, which is a significant focus for Warner Bros. in gaming."

Berger also indicated that Rocksteady won't be pigeonholed into the Batman universe, saying that the development studio is also at work on other Warner Bros.-owned franchises. "Rocksteady is working on the sequel to Batman: Arkham Asylum, and we hope to have them work on other Warner Bros. intellectual properties too," he said.

Warner Bros., which owns the DC Comics brand, will be publishing the upcoming sequel to Arkham Asylum, as well as focusing on developing the Mortal Kombat, The Lord of the Rings, and Lego franchises.
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Pretty interesting tidbit of news to say the least. Heres hoping Arkham II will improve the greatness that was Arkham I.
I hope Mr. Freeze is in the sequal somehow or Clayface.

 

[AshburnerX]

Arkham 2 probably won't be called Arkham 2. It'll probably be more like Gotham City.

 

[Dave]

Yay! More consolidation to produce nothing more than craptasticly generic stuff! TV, Movies, Music and now games.

 

[Alucard]

What Dave you calling Arkham lame? Sure it had a few not so great design features in the game; but mostly its the most solid Batman game I've played in years.

 

[CynicismKills]

Yay! More consolidation to produce nothing more than craptasticly generic stuff! TV, Movies, Music and now games.

Rocksteady's Batman game is easily the best Batman game, and likely one of (if not the) best comic-based games. It's hardly generic. Corporate buyouts aren't always doom and gloom.

 

[Alucard]

The only flaw I could see was from crawling through a lot of the ducts. The titan fights.
Crocks lair. Could have been a tad more frightening. Bane fight was a tad anticlimatic as well as the final Joker fight.

Overall one of the best Batman games of all time.

I hope Eidos works on some other DC comic superheroes as well. I think a Green Arrow game could be pretty good.

 

[Dave]

Yay! More consolidation to produce nothing more than craptasticly generic stuff! TV, Movies, Music and now games.

Rocksteady's Batman game is easily the best Batman game, and likely one of (if not the) best comic-based games. It's hardly generic. Corporate buyouts aren't always doom and gloom.[/QUOTE]

I loved Arkham. But mass consolidation TENDS to start the steady slide towards generic crap. Sure the game Rocksteady put out was good, but that's not necessarily the game that Warner-owned Rocksteady would put out.

 

[Chibibar]

Yay! More consolidation to produce nothing more than craptasticly generic stuff! TV, Movies, Music and now games.

Rocksteady's Batman game is easily the best Batman game, and likely one of (if not the) best comic-based games. It's hardly generic. Corporate buyouts aren't always doom and gloom.[/QUOTE]

I loved Arkham. But mass consolidation TENDS to start the steady slide towards generic crap. Sure the game Rocksteady put out was good, but that's not necessarily the game that Warner-owned Rocksteady would put out.[/QUOTE]
I can see where Dave is going. When you have a large company "overlooking" your work that is NOT originally a game company, things will change.

this reminds me of many Dilbert cartoon where the manager make weird changes to a project cause it "make sense" to him, but not to the engineer (designers)

 

[CynicismKills]

Yay! More consolidation to produce nothing more than craptasticly generic stuff! TV, Movies, Music and now games.

Rocksteady's Batman game is easily the best Batman game, and likely one of (if not the) best comic-based games. It's hardly generic. Corporate buyouts aren't always doom and gloom.[/QUOTE]

I loved Arkham. But mass consolidation TENDS to start the steady slide towards generic crap. Sure the game Rocksteady put out was good, but that's not necessarily the game that Warner-owned Rocksteady would put out.[/QUOTE]

In the same vein, however, Blizzard was bought out and the mass consensus is WoW is just as popular - if not moreso - than it ever has been. There's no reason to be a Debbie Downer when we haven't even seen the results of this buyout yet. Funneling more cash into a production cycle can mean better games, too, not just a developer losing its creative license. It's all going to boil down to how much control WB tries to take, and if they push (and succeed) in any kind of re-structuring of the developer itself.

 

[Frank]

Yay! More consolidation to produce nothing more than craptasticly generic stuff! TV, Movies, Music and now games.

Rocksteady's Batman game is easily the best Batman game, and likely one of (if not the) best comic-based games. It's hardly generic. Corporate buyouts aren't always doom and gloom.[/QUOTE]

The 6 year old in me cries foul and then grips this game tightly. I fucking loved this game.

 

[@Li3n]

Yay! More consolidation to produce nothing more than craptasticly generic stuff! TV, Movies, Music and now games.

Rocksteady's Batman game is easily the best Batman game, and likely one of (if not the) best comic-based games. It's hardly generic. Corporate buyouts aren't always doom and gloom.[/QUOTE]

I loved Arkham. But mass consolidation TENDS to start the steady slide towards generic crap. Sure the game Rocksteady put out was good, but that's not necessarily the game that Warner-owned Rocksteady would put out.[/QUOTE]

In the same vein, however, Blizzard was bought out and the mass consensus is WoW is just as popular - if not moreso - than it ever has been. There's no reason to be a Debbie Downer when we haven't even seen the results of this buyout yet. Funneling more cash into a production cycle can mean better games, too, not just a developer losing its creative license. It's all going to boil down to how much control WB tries to take, and if they push (and succeed) in any kind of re-structuring of the developer itself.[/QUOTE]

Blizz made non-interference part of the deal, and we still had scares about bnet 2.0 charging fees and crap.

 

[ThatNickGuy]

I'm hoping this brings new DC games down the line, too. Most especially a Superman game.

 

[AshburnerX]

I'm hoping this brings new DC games down the line, too. Most especially a Superman game.

Superman is a hard character to make a game for, namely due to his power. It's hard to have a justified threat against him when he's practically a god. I'd rather see something about Blue Beetle or something.

 

[ThatNickGuy]

I came up with (what I thought was) an interesting premise for that, actually. The old post might still be around here somewhere, but it basically breaks down to this:

-Open/sandbox world
-Lex has done something to Superman where his power levels go all the way back to Golden Age levels
-Gradually gain his powers back throughout the game as you defeat various villains and missions.

 

[AshburnerX]

I STILL liked the idea of having the Health Meter represent Metropolis's well being instead of Supe's. It really helps to show that Superman isn't the one in danger when something attacks the city, but rather the city itself.

 

[CynicismKills]

Yay! More consolidation to produce nothing more than craptasticly generic stuff! TV, Movies, Music and now games.

Rocksteady's Batman game is easily the best Batman game, and likely one of (if not the) best comic-based games. It's hardly generic. Corporate buyouts aren't always doom and gloom.[/QUOTE]

The 6 year old in me cries foul and then grips this game tightly. I fucking loved this game.

[/QUOTE]

Touche, sir, I had forgotten about that one. I'm not sure if it's better but it's probably the only other good one.

 

[AshburnerX]

The only three good ones are the NES movie one, Arkham Asylum, and maybe the one based on the 90's animated series on the SNES. That's about it though.

 

[JONJONAUG]

Yay! More consolidation to produce nothing more than craptasticly generic stuff! TV, Movies, Music and now games.

Normally I would agree with this but a lot of WB owned game producers put out pretty solid stuff.