Prizefighter Developer Is Shutting Down

[ChaseB]

Venom Games will be closing at the end of July, CVG learned today. The company most recently developed Don King Presents: Prizefighter and before that had worked on the relatively recent Rocky games.

According to CVG, the employees learned earlier today that the studio would be closing. Since there was no warning before the announcement and this closing comes a mere few weeks after Prizefighter released, it seems like this may have been set-in-motion long ago.

So the question is: Was Prizefighter rushed out the door before it was ready? It only came to one platform after all, and the media build-up was far from substantial -- not to mention the game was critically blasted on a technical level, which would signify that there was not enough polishing time.

CVG also found out that Venom Games was originally working on Bioshock for the PS3 (originally it was going to be released at the same time as the 360 version) but the coders said that it could not be done. So with that in mind it does make sense why there is no PS3 version of the game.

Still, the media blitz for this game came abnormally late in the development cycle. Also the window which the game released during was a bit strange when you consider that Top Spin (another 2K game) released almost on top of it, even though there was not a new Fight Night to compete with.

The Wii version of Prizefighter is not supposed to come out until September, but presumably Venom Games was developing that version as well, which leaves a whole bunch of other questions unanswered.

Venom Games is located in Newcastle, UK and was founded back in 2003. CVG contacted 2K about the closing but received a "no comment" as the only response.

Venom Games set to close [CVG]

[aholbert32]

I guess that means no patch or downloadable content

[thelwig14]

There is no question it was rushed as there are things that should have been tweaked and were pretty apparent.

Like aholbert says, kiss any patch or DLC goodbye.

I would be pissed at 2K but they did such a damn fine job on TS3...

[JayBee74]

That REEKS a bit no matter what your opinion of the game is.

[Complex]

Did they give a reason?

[SHAKYR]

There goes competition. I wish Visual Concepts pick up...actually redo...come up with a better boxing game. We need competition.

[Jon22]

I wonder how the game sold?

[metallicatz]

This is a good thing. Venom makes bad games. Simple as that. Too bad they didn't get the axe before PF was released. I'd love to see a VC boxing game, but 2K needs to lick its wounds after the atrocious showing of PF. Even Kelly Pavlik dissed the game.