Infogrames has Sold the Civilization Franchise

Reo Strong writes "Yahoo Finance is reporting that Infogrames isn't making enough money and as part of an announcement it was revealed they are selling the rights to the Civilization series. "Bonnell also said that Infogrames recently sold the franchise for the game Civilization, making a capital gain of 15.5 million euros, which should help second-half accounts."

Comments

Here's the rundown

[EvilDonut]

HomeLAN Fed has the details, but here's the rundown:

• The buyer is not known at this point. An Atari/Inforgrames rep. has stated that it's up to the buyer to disclose. No rumors yet, either.
  
• Atari/Infogrames has sold the right to publish any new Civ games. They retain the right to sell the old Civ games until october 2005.
  
• The sale is part of Atari/Infogrames' plan to raise the capital needed in order to repay a 117 million bond due in 2005.
  

Re:Wait, isnt Infogrames Atari now?

[Mattb90]

The parent company based in France is still called Infogrames - or Infogrames Entertainment to give the company its full title. This is the head of the group, which contains units like Atari, Inc. (which operates officially in the US, and is the parent for all the 'Atari' offices, like Atari UK).

Re:Civ 4 in development still.... any changes?

[Aloekak]

I'm confused as to how this series is not making enough money.

The Civ series is making money. That's why they sold it off, they thought they could get plenty of money for the rights...the rights to distribute it.

You've got to remember that the gaming industry is much like the movie or music industry (I'm not talking about the evilness, but not ruling that out as well). At the top, you have the big distributers, the Atari's, Infograme's, EA's, etc. At the bottom, you have the development studios. The development studios will pitch an idea to a distributer and then hopefully get the funding to do it.

This is an overly simplified description, but should give you a good idea. That said, Sid Meier and his studio, Firaxis, will probably keep turning out new titles, but under a different distributer(atleast as far as the Civ series goes), he may still keep future Pirates, Alpha Centari, etc series titles under Infogrames.

Re:New Developer should Publish it through Steam

[Babbster]

If a Civilization game comes out requiring Steam, I won't buy it.

As has already been pointed out, Civilization 3 made a lot of money (if not, there would not have been two expansions), and the only reason Atari/Infogrames sold the rights was because they needed the quick cash infusion. They don't NEED to change the distribution scheme and, in fact, it can only hurt them.

Re:Smart

[obeythefist]

Did you ever play the game? Warmongering is more effective than ever before! The special units available to some Civs are incredibly useful. The addition of armies and refining of combat makes the whole system better than ever for being aggressive in the game.

There are many excellent strategies for a warmongering player to adopt. I'm not sure where you're coming from.