Since Bizarre is now part of Activision, they won’t be handling the development on future Project Gotham Racing titles. In fact, they already finished up everything for PGR4, so they’re all done with Microsoft’s racing franchise. So who might take over? Turn 10, the internal studio at Microsoft who handles Forza might get the job. According to an interview with Shane Kim:
You know, we have a great internal racing studio in Turn 10, the creators of Forza Motorsport. And our goal is to roll the studio so that they can do more creative execution within the racing space. So you can imagine a future where they would develop a new version of Project Gotham Racing. We don’t have anything concrete there, and I do think that after four versions of PGR, it’s really important for us to take a fresh creative approach to it and to really think about what we want the next version of PGR to be if we do that.
I think taking a new approach to the series is a great idea. I’d love to see some new innovation with Gotham. I loved PGR2 and 3, but PGR4 seemed like just another game in the series. We’ll see what happens.
Even before the sale to Activision was announced, Microsoft handed Bizarre Creations a pink slip. They’re going to use in-house resources to develop their Project Gotham Racing series.
Could this have been the reason for the sale? Possibly. But Bizarre isn’t just a one trick pony. They’ve put together a few other nice titles, like Geometry Wars, Boom Boom Rocket, and The Club. They’ve confirmed they’re working on two new big franchises under the Activision umbrella.
A few things need to be looked at here. Does Microsoft have the in-house resources to keep Project Gotham at the current level of fun and style? Will Bizarre take their development knowledge and create a game with Activision to put Project Gotham at the bottom of the barrel? Only time will tell, and we’ll keep you posted.
Activision dropped some serious cash to acquire Bizarre Creations, the developer of Project Gotham Racing and Geometry Wars. The actual price wasn’t released, but I wouldn’t expect it to be cheap.
Bizarre Creations had a statement regarding the news on their own website:
Well, we’re no longer tied to just one platform for starters. Our future titles can be on whatever we please – we are a truly multiplatform studio now. Of course that doesn’t mean that we’ll be forced to make a port of every game to every console in existence… we simply have that option available to us.
Both of our two main game teams are about to start work on two new AAA titles for Activision. One will be a racing game, and the other a character game. Of course we’ll make some more detailed announcements in the future, but be prepared for something big and exciting!
Very cool. Could PGR5 end up on all consoles? Only time will tell.
The highly anticipated racing game from Microsoft has already gone gold, well ahead of its October 2 release date reports gamerscoreblog.com.
The official “PGR 4” web site at http://www.pgrnations.comcontains the most recent news and updates in the Project Gotham universe. Currently, the web site is the home to the game’s full robust vehicles list, including models from the world’s top car and motorcycle manufacturers, as well as the official Achievements list. The site will be continually updated to give fans a true home base with all the “PGR 4” information and content they’re looking for.
If PGR4 is anything like Forza, expect this game to be a monster.
Lack of disk space on the DVD for PGR4 is going to inhibit some of the game’s production, namely the ability to race on the same tracks and day and night. This is a posting from Bizarre Studios, the OFFICIAL forum for PGR4. The blogger mentioned here is Ben, who is also an OFFICIAL game developer. When asked whether the day/night tracks would be available, he replied:
You won’t see different times of day per city because this involves recreating all the textures again (one for day and one for night). Whilst this wasn’t a problem for our dev team, it was a problem fitting all this data onto a single DVD. So we’ve worked around the problem by providing different lighting models per city. For example, Macau is always in the daytime, but if you play it during a storm everything looks darker and more foreboding. If you play during a blizzard then things are slightly tinged blue and everything seems more frozen. Of course, playing this track in sunshine will make everything appear bright and yellowy.
It seems that Bizarre is the latest developer to have the DVD’s limitations stand in the way of progress.
We saw the trailer before showing the rain, now we have one showing the snow, this time at Nurburgring, which is probably the most famous track in the world.
What gets me is that the snow doesn’t seem to have any effect on the driving physics. If I’m taking a sharp turn at 80mph in a Ferrari, you better believe I’m going to spin out multiple times. It doesn’t look like that happens from this trailer. Hopefully this gets resolved before the game ships.
All three of these games look beautiful. There’s no denying that. But how do they stack up head to head? A user sent us this image to show the differences between these 3 games with cars they have in common.
Personally, I think GT HD has better car detail than both of the others. What do you think?
Activision dropped some serious cash to acquire Bizarre Creations, the developer of Project Gotham Racing and Geometry Wars. The actual price wasn’t released, but I wouldn’t expect it to be cheap.
Lack of disk space on the DVD for PGR4 is going to inhibit some of the game’s production, namely the ability to race on the same tracks and day and night. This is a posting from 
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