I was one of the people looking forward to a new True Crime game as I loved the ones on the Playstation 2. When Activision announced that they were working on a new one I was excited to see what new features they would add to the open world genre, with it being a new generation and all.
A few months back unfortunately Activision canned the game before we even had a chance to see more. Speaking to Joystiq, Activision CEO Eric Hirshberg revealed why the game was canned. Apparently they felt that True Crime would never be able to reach the top of it’s genre, due to it being a very over crowded one. Not only that but they also felt that the game would not generate enough profit to redeem the incredibly bloated budget needed to make the game.
“The game had been delayed twice; the budget had been increased twice; and it had ballooned to a size where it was going to have to be a pretty incredible success in order to be worth the investment that it was taking to get it done,” Hirshberg said.
He went on to say that when the game was green lit there was more space in the marketplace for a game like True Crime to come out, b
ut in the end, once things got more competitive they made the call to cancel the game based on quality issues.
“Just a few years back, there was room for a lot more titles to find an audience of scale.” he said. “The finished product was not going to be at the top of that genre.
“The only reason I’m hesitating [on offering an opinion] isn’t due to lack of transparency, it’s due to respect for the people who were making it who I think are incredibly talented and really brought their all and I don’t want to say anything to disparage their efforts.
“That’s a super-competitive genre with some of the world’s best games in it.”
It looks to me that they didn’t want to go up against the likes of Saints Row: The Third and Grand Theft Auto V. Let us know your thoughts on this below.
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