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Radical Entertainment is a video game developer based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. It was founded in 1991 and previously developed games for game publishers such as THQ, Microsoft and Fox Interactive. It is now an entirely owned subsidiary of Activision Blizzard after being acquired by Vivendi Games in 2005.[1]

History[ | ]

Radical Entertainment started out as a small time game company that eventually began to develop big-time games for big-time publishers. Radical was acquired by Vivendi Universal Games in 2005.

Before Vivendi[ | ]

Before being acquired by Vivendi Universal Games, Radical had developed various games for numerous publishers including Microsoft Game Studios, THQ and Fox Interactive. Although Radical was not a subsidiary of Vivendi till 2005, they did however develope a few of Vivendi Universal's titles including Hulk and The Simpsons Hit & Run.

369 Interactive[ | ]

A division of Radical Entertainment, 369 Interactive, developed games for Ubisoft. Namely video games based on the numerous CSI television shows. However, after developing a final game in 2005, 369 Interactive was cut from developing the games and was succeeded by TellTale Games. The reason they were cut is primarily because of Vivendi acquiring Radical.

Vivendi Acquisition[ | ]

After being acquired by Vivendi in 2005, Radical began to make many games such as Scarface: The World is Yours and The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction while being published under Vivendi's Sierra Entertainment label. Radical were also given the licence to continue development of the Crash Bandicoot franchise which was also published under Sierra Entertainment. Radical developed 3 Crash Bandicoot games which were Crash Tag Team Racing, Crash of the Titans, and Crash: Mind Over Mutant. Radical also developed Prototype alongside Crash: Mind Over Mutant.

Vivendi - Activision Merger[ | ]

In 2008 it was announced that Vivendi Games and Activision would merge to form Activision Blizzard. At the time of the merge Radical were working on 4 different projects, 2 were 'unnamed projects' and the other 2 were Crash: Mind Over Mutant and Prototype. After the merger took place, about half of Radical's staff were cut under Activision Blizzards restructuring. This resulted in the cancellation of the 2 unnamed projects while development of Crash and Prototype were unaffected. Crash: Mind Over Mutant was one of the last games to be published under the Sierra label (Note: Some copies do have Activision's label instead) where as Prototype was published under the Activision label.

Developing under Activision[ | ]

After releasing Prototype in 2009, Radical had not officially announced any new projects. They did however unofficially confirm that they were working on a new Crash Bandicoot game (via Crash Mania) which is now in a hiatius state (see reason in next paragraph). It was also rumoured that Radical were also working on the new Spider-Man game.

In early 2010, Activision Blizzard once again went through a company restructure. This resulted in Radical losing half of their current staff. The staff that got laid off were the development team that were working on the Crash game. This led people to believe that Activision had scrapped plans to release that Crash game altogether and now the current state of the new Crash game is unknown. It was later revealed that Beenox were developing the new Spider-Man game.

Current Status[ | ]

Recently Radical Entertainment has posted new job offers. The descriptions state that they are developing an open/world combat game and an action/platformer game. This shows the possibility of Radical releasing 2 new games in the future.

However, a recent resume of a former Radical Employee stating an action/platformer game to be unreleased. Concept art and two work-in-progress animation videos have also been found which proved that Radical had been developing the Crash Bandicoot game that they unofficially announced on Crash Mania. Activision has since removed one of the videos from YouTube under a copyright claim. This recently stirred up much controversy among Crash fans as they want Activision to release this game.

369 Interactive[ | ]

369 Interactive is a division of Radical that deals with PC-exclusive games, primarily making use of the CSI licensed property.

369 Interactive has developed such games as:

Games developed[ | ]

See also[ | ]

References[ | ]

External links[ | ]

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