MTV Partners With Bruckheimer For Game Studio
MTV and producer Jerry Bruckheimer have partnered to develop a new video game development studio. Bruckheimer, producer of Top Gun, and Walt Disney’s successful Pirates of the Caribbean film franchise among a long list of film and TV hits like CSI, said he plans to do for video games what he has done for other genres of content.
MTV Networks, a division of Viacom, has set aside more than $500 million to invest in video games, and gaming websites. Its success with the recently launched Rock Band music-based game has inspired MTV to explore other new categories untapped by the $30 billion global video games market.
The new studio venture is determined to break new ground in interactive storytelling on the Internet, computers, and video game systems, said Van Toffler, president of MTV Networks’ Music and Logo Group in a statement.
Left unanswered is how big of a budget the new studio will have at its disposal. Top tier games such as Microsoft’s Halo 3 and Activision’s Call of Duty 4 command budgets of anywhere from $20 million to well over $30 million. However, this is well under the typical Hollywood blockbuster that usually runs over $100 million to produce. Halo 3 grossed over $300 million globally in the first week of release.
