Hollywood award-winning producer, Jerry Bruckheimer, and
Viacom Inc's MTV will join to form a video game development studio, which will
bring together Hollywood
and technology.
Bruckheimer’s company will make the announcement on
Wednesday. The deal will mean that the two companies will have to develop
actual game videos, which probably will appear on the shelves in 2009, the New
York Times informs.
Bruckheimer, producer of movies like the successful “Pirates
of the Caribbean,” “Bad Boys,” and “Beverly Hills Cop”, says that he will do
for the video games what he has done for other genres.
In a phone interview he said: "It's no different than
what we did with movies. We did 'Top Gun' when everyone said you couldn't do an
aviation movie because they all failed. We did a pirate movie when they said
pirate movies aren't going to work," Reuters quotes.
"We approach gaming the same way. We see things a
little differently, that maybe other people wouldn't see," he added.
Earlier this year MTV Networks allocated almost $500 million
for the investments in the video games, including this deal with Bruckheimer.
MTV Networks released several weeks ago music-based game
“Rock Band”, where the players get to operate instruments. It was a success.
This deal won’t involve music or television shows, but
instead will try to create new interactive stories for the Internet, computers
and video game systems, according to Van Toffler president of MTV Networks'
Music and Logo Group.
Bruckheimer is currently producing a movie adaptation of the
game “Prince of Persia.” Filming will start next summer.
Even though is usual for the game industry to create titles which
are based on movies, there haven’t made such a great impact.
Take for example the Wachowski brothers "Matrix"
series of games which were not such a big hit like the movies they were based
on.
According to Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Morgan, MTV
has the possibility to promote the products on the air and so it could make a
great force in the game business.
He said: “In the game
business, MTV is a start-up. But they have the resolve and they have the
resources.”
