Jerry Bruckheimer’s game studio signals games are still hot
Video games are officially cool. Jerry Bruckheimer has blessed them. And he’s serious about making high-quality games.
The famous Hollywood producer (Pirates of the Caribbean, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation) has now launched a game studio in partnership with MTV and a couple of seasoned video game veterans, according to Variety .
Bruckheimer announced the foray into games 18 months ago, but now he has named his game producers: Jim Veevaert, a Microsoft game veteran who discovered Halo, and Jay Cohen, former game development head at Ubisoft. Those are some very big names.
Veevaert spent eight years at Microsoft. He was the scout who helped convince Bungie, a devoted Mac game development company, to sell to Microsoft and publish Halo for the first Xbox game console. He also helped Microsoft land Gears of War from Epic Games as an exclusive for the Xbox 360.
Cohen spent 10 years at French video game company Ubisoft running the company’s North American business and led big game franchises such as Prince of Persia, Assassin’s Creed, and Tom Clancy game properties. Both games and their sequels have sold tens of millions of units.
The Jerry Bruckheimer Games company will make original games. Meanwhile, Bruckheimer is still in the process of making Prince of Persia into a major movie for Disney. Hollywood movie studios and movie makers have gotten serious about making games again, as they periodically do. But it looks like Bruckheimer is taking the right approach of snaring top game industry talent first, rather than making games based on licenses.
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About the Author, Dean Takahashi
Dean is lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He covers video games, security, chips and a variety of other subjects. Dean previously worked at the San Jose Mercury News, the Wall Street Journal, the Red Herring, the Los Angeles Times, the Orange County Register and the Dallas Times Herald. He is the author of two books, Opening the Xbox and the Xbox 360 Uncloaked. Follow him on Twitter at @deantak, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.