PlayStation 3 | Radical suffers second round of layoffs in 18 months

Activision trims number of teams at Vancouver-based Prototype developer in "realigning resources" against trimmed slate of releases.

For the second time in 18 months, Radical Entertainment has been hit by a round of layoffs. An Activision representative would not confirm the number of affected employees for GameSpot, but did say the Vancouver, British Columbia-based developer of games like Prototype and Scarface had its number of teams reduced in order to better match its resources with the titles in development.

Prototype is Radical's most recently released title.

Activision issued the following statement:

Activision Publishing continually evaluates its resources to ensure that they are properly matched against its product slate and strategic goals. In 2010, the company's SKU count will be smaller than in 2009 driven in part, by a decrease in the number of music-based games we will be releasing.

As we discussed on our earnings conference call yesterday, we are directing our resources against the largest and most profitable business segments, and as part of this initiative, we are realigning our resources to better reflect our slate and the market opportunities. At the same time, we are increasing our digital/online capabilities as we expect that digital/online will continue to become a more meaningful part of our business model in the years ahead.

Radical's projects have not been officially announced, but last year reports surfaced that the studio was working on a new Spider-Man game. Activision had previously confirmed that it was working on a game for the fourth Spider-Man movie, then set for launch in the summer of 2011. However, the status of that project is unclear given that pre-production conflicts have since pushed the film's release date back. Last May, the studio also was hiring Wii gameplay designers with "an affinity for third-person open-world camera design" for a port of an Xbox 360 and PS3 game, prompting speculation of a Wii edition of Prototype.

The last layoffs at Radical came as a result of the merger between Activision and the studio's previous owner, Vivendi Games. At the time, The Vancouver Sun reported those cuts to include 100 employees of the studio, whose Prototype was one of only a handful of Vivendi projects that Activision held onto after the merger. The Crash Bandicoot series, another Radical-developed staple, was also retained.

Radical Dreamers

Source: http://www.gamespot.com/ps3/action/prototype/news.html?sid=6250275