Is there any hope of the Sierra brand being revived or sold?

[Mop Jockey]

In 2008, after Activision and Vivendi merged, Sierra was put under intense scrutiny by Activision to have their products do better, and several months later, Sierra's development studios were shut down, and not long after, Sierra was absorbed into Activision, with Activision hoping to sell it.

 

Is there any hope that at some point in te future, the Sierra brand will either be revived, or sold off? Now that Activision is independent from Vivendi I wonder if they'll ever bring Sierra back.....

[MusicallyInspired]

Sierra was dismantled long before ActiVision came along.

 

At one point Vivendi was selling off the IPs, the only one that sold was Leisure Suit Larry to CodeMasters, where it resides to this day. Everything else was crazy expensive. I dont think ActiVision has any plans to sell what's left, though.

[Intendant S]

Basically what MI said above. The closest you're gonna get to a Sierra revival any time soon is the latest crop of games being done independently by former members of the company. CodeMasters loaned the rights to Replay to do a Larry 1 remake and Activision is letting Jane and Phoenix Online work on a GK1 remake, and are waiting to see how these games fare before doing anything with the IPs. At least that's what I got from it all.

[Mop Jockey]

It sounds almost like Activision are setting this up for failure.

What I mean is, the adventure game market is (compared to say, the action game or shooter market) a tiny one to begin with. Even during the heydey of adventure games in the early 1990s, an adventure game selling 500,000 copies was considered a best seller in the genre. Compare that to say, Grand Theft Auto, which sold around 2-3 million copies....

 

Now, you take this small, small market and narrow it further down to Sierra fans; specifically, hardcore Sierra fans--The only people who would buy a REMAKE of games released 20 years ago.

 

When GK1 and LSL1 only sell 500,000 copies, Activision can sit back and say, "The adventure genre is still dead, we're just going to keep those Sierra IPs sitting on the shelf for the next few decades--no point investing money in a dead genre."

[JimmyTwoBucks]

It's funny really, because the IPs on their own are almost worthless if you don't also have the 

talented people who made the games what they were.

 

It's like imagine if I owned the name The Rolling Stones, and I wanted to put out an album under that name,

but I couldn't get any of the members of the band to play on the album.

 

At the peak of the game series' fame, you could have probably got some hacks to put out

a SQ7 and sold a few copies off JUST the name Space Quest, but people would soon realize if the

game sucked, and you wouldn't be able to sell any of a SQ8.

 

And at this point in time the name isn't even recognizable to most people, so what is the 

point in owning those IPs at all.

 

The name Space Venture is probably worth more right now, because it's had proven recent

investment with the kickstarter and most importantly it has the real creative team behind it.

[PurpleTentacle]

 

When GK1 and LSL1 only sell 500,000 copies, Activision can sit back and say, "The adventure genre is still dead, we're just going to keep those Sierra IPs sitting on the shelf for the next few decades--no point investing money in a dead genre."

Did Larry Reloaded even sell that many copies? I'm really curious. Anyone here have any idea?

[Fronzel Neekburm]

It's funny really, because the IPs on their own are almost worthless if you don't also have the 

talented people who made the games what they were.

 

Sound advice for any publisher seeking to milk the next franchise cash cow. SquareEnix, take note!

[Troels Pleimert]

At the peak of the game series' fame, you could have probably got some hacks to put out

a SQ7 and sold a few copies off JUST the name Space Quest, but people would soon realize if the

game sucked, and you wouldn't be able to sell any of a SQ8.

This is pretty much what happened with the Escape Factory sequel they were planning. Yeurgh.