united-front-games posts

The cancelation earlier this month of the open world crime action game True Crime Hong Kong by publisher Activision was expected to affect its developer United Front Games in terms of its personnel numbers. This week our sister site Joystiq confirmed from a rep from United Front Games that the Vancouver-based studio has experienced "a reduction in staff" due to the cancelation of the game.

While specific numbers were not provided Joystiq stated that activity on on the developer's LinkedIn web page indicates that at least 25 team members have been laid off. The rep did state that United Front Games is "still very much open for business and we will continue to ship top games."

When word got out earlier this week that Activision Blizzard had decided to cancel its planned release of True Crime Hong Kong, many wondered what would become of United Front Games, the Vancouver-based developer who was making the open world crime action game for the PC and other platforms.

While there is no official word if the developer had layoffs as a result of the cancellation, United Front Games' web site has posted up a statement about Activision Blizzard's decision:

We are sorry we did not get a chance to complete this project with Activision, but we understand why. We are both committed to doing quality games and nothing less. Maybe we will have a chance to work together in the future, but in the meantime we are setting our creative sights on a different horizon. You can keep up with the latest developments at UFG here on our site.

True Crime Hong Kong, the planned revival of Activision's open world crime action series, has been canceled by the publisher. The news of the cancellation hit a few hours ago on other gaming web sites and was confirmed by Activision Blizzard in their quarterly financial press release issued just a few minutes ago.

True Crime Hong Kong was first announced in December 2009 by the publisher as a revival of the series that it had started in the early 2000s. Developer United Front Studios was the team behind the new True Crime Hong Kong but the game itself had never been demoed to the press and Activision had only released a teaser trailer and some screenshots before today's announcement. There's no word yet on how much this will affect the developer in terms of layoffs.

Activision also announced that it would shut down its console-based Guitar Hero business as well. In its press release, the publisher states, "These decisions are based on the desire to focus on the greatest opportunities that the company currently has to create the world's best interactive entertainment experiences."

Update: During Activision Blizzard's quarterly conference call with investors, execs stated that they felt that True Crime Hong Hong would just not be good enough to compete against other open world action games.

The revival of Activision's True Crime open world crime action game series has been pushed back out of 2010. In a press release announcing Activision Blizzard's financial results the publisher revealed that True Crime: Hong Kong will not make its planned fall 2010 release date. Instead the game will be coming out sometime in 2011.

The publisher said the decision to delay the game was "in order to give the development team more time to deliver the high-quality entertainment experience they envision for the game." That development team is United Front Games who previously made the PS3 exclusive game ModNation Racers.

There hasn't been a lot of news about the relaunch of Activision's True Crime franchise since the open world action game was first announced last December. That changed today with the launch of the game's official web site which features the first in-game screenshots from the title developed by United Front Games.

Along with the new web site comes word that the game, where your character goes deep undercover in Hong Kong's triad crime scene, will have a number of well known actors handling the voices for the game's characters. The voice cast will include people like Tom Wilkinson, James Hong, James Liao, Byron Mann, Dustin Nguyen, George Cheung and Sammo Hung. True Crime is slated for release this fall.

Some might remember the original True Crime games as an over-the-top action game where players take the role of a rogue agent, determined to infiltrate organized crime rings using mostly brute force. Well, it's been a few years, and the series is getting a bit of a reboot, sending players to the streets of Hong Kong to infiltrate the Triads. As the saying goes, the more things change...

Download HD True Crime Announcement Trailer (62 MB)