Climax Studios

Last updated

Climax Studios
FormerlyImages Software (1988–1995)
The Climax Group (1995–2005)
Company type Subsidiary
Industry Video games
Founded3 February 1988;36 years ago (1988-02-03)
FounderKarl Jeffery
Headquarters Gunwharf Quays,
Portsmouth
,
England
Key people
Simon Gardner (CEO)
Parent Keywords Studios (2021–present)
Website climaxstudios.com

Climax Studios is a British video game developer based in Portsmouth that is best known for their work on the 2004 action role-playing game Sudeki and the 2007 and 2009 survival horror video games Silent Hill: Origins and Silent Hill: Shattered Memories from the Silent Hill franchise.

Contents

History

Climax was founded by Karl Jeffery on 3 February 1988. [1] It was originally known as Images Software Ltd., and its initial focus was on developing and porting games for the generation of home computers, consoles and handhelds. [2]

In October 1998, Climax announced the establishment of Climax PC Studio, a sub-studio focused on personal computer game development and located in an office next to Climax's headquarters. [3] Another such studio, Climax Game Boy World, was launched during E3 1999 and focused on the development for the Game Boy family of handheld game devices. [4] Pixel Planet, a Brighton-based studio founded in September 1999 by Tony Beckwith and Greg Michael, entered into a partnership with Climax in November 1999 that saw Pixel Planet become part of the Climax group, being renamed Climax Brighton. [5] This was followed up by Nottingham-based Anthill Studios, which was acquired in June 2000 and renamed "Climax Nottingham". The studio, under the continued leadership of founder Paul Carruthers, was put in charge of the game Warhammer Online, based on Games Workshop's Warhammer franchise. [6] [7] By this point, the main studios in the Climax group's Fareham headquarters had been consolidated under "Climax Fareham". [7] The Climax Brighton studio moved to Hove in August 2000. [8] When the studio Charybdis saw large redundancies in staff in April 2001, Climax announced its intent to hire 20 of its former staff at the Nottingham studio. [9] Climax also acquired Syrox Developments of Kingston-upon-Thames in June 2001. [10] In July 2001, Geoff Heath was named Climax's chairman. [11]

The flagship Climax Fareham studio moved to Portsmouth, into offices in the Gunwharf Quays centre, in July 2002, being renamed "Climax Solent". The administrative portion of the Climax group remained in Fareham. [12] A fifth studio based in Venice, California was opened in October 2003. [13] In November 2004, Climax consolidated its London and Solent studios under the name "Climax Action" and rebranded the Brighton and Nottingham studios as "Climax Racing" and "Climax Online", respectively. [14]

In 2006 Konami announced that Climax Action was working on the next entry in the popular Silent Hill franchise of horror games after the original team behind the series, Konami's internal development team Team Silent, had been disbanded. It was titled Silent Hill: Origins and exclusively announced for the PlayStation Portable. In October 2007 the game was released to positive reviews. [15] In 2008 a PlayStation 2 version of the game followed.

Climax's Kingston studio was closed in February 2008, leaving the Portsmouth headquarters as the only remaining studio. [16]

In 2009 it was announced that Climax was working on another Silent Hill game for Nintendo's Wii console titled Shattered Memories . [17] The game was announced as a remake of the original Silent Hill game, although the term "re-imagining" was used to emphasise that it was going to provide a completely new experience. Later versions for the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation Portable were also announced.

In recent years Climax has developed and published a number of VR titles, including Lola and The Giant (which was featured at Google's I/O'17 event), Bandit Six, Gun Sight, DCL: The Game [18] [19] and Dirt Rally 2.0 which was co-developed with Codemasters. [20]

In 2007, following a rumour that had been going around the industry about a possible sale of the company, Jeffery confirmed that he had owned 100% of the studio's shares, denying any of the rumours about an acquisition. [21] The studio would then later be acquired by Keywords Studios in April 2021 for £47 million. [22]

Former development subsidiaries

Games developed

Related Research Articles

Silent Hill is a horror anthology media franchise centered on a series of survival horror games created by Keiichiro Toyama and published by Konami. The first four video games in the series, Silent Hill, Silent Hill 2, Silent Hill 3, and Silent Hill 4: The Room, were developed by an internal group called Team Silent, a development staff within former Konami subsidiary Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Xbox Game Studios</span> American video game company

Xbox Game Studios is an American video game publisher based in Redmond, Washington. It was established in March 2000, spun out from an internal Games Group, for the development and publishing of video games for Microsoft Windows. It has since expanded to include games and other interactive entertainment for the namesake Xbox platforms, other desktop operating systems, Windows Mobile and other mobile platforms, and web-based portals.

IO Interactive A/S (IOI) is a Danish video game developer based in Copenhagen, best known for creating and developing the Hitman and Kane and Lynch franchises. IO Interactive's most recent game is Hitman 3, which was released in January 2021.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rebellion Developments</span> Video game company

Rebellion Developments Limited is a British video game developer based in Oxford, England. Founded by Jason and Chris Kingsley in December 1992, the company is best known for its Sniper Elite series and multiple games in the Alien vs. Predator series. Sister company Rebellion Publishing has published comic books since 2000, when it purchased 2000 AD, the publisher of characters such as Judge Dredd and Rogue Trooper.

Eidos Interactive Limited was a British video game publisher based in Wimbledon, London. Its games series included Championship Manager (1992), Tomb Raider (1996) and Hitman (2000). Domark was founded by Mark Strachan and Dominic Wheatley in 1984. In 1995, it was acquired by software company Eidos. Ian Livingstone, who held a stake in Domark, became executive chairman of Eidos and held various roles including creative director. Eidos took over U.S. Gold in 1996, which included developer Core Design, and merged its operations including Domark, which created publishing subsidiary Eidos Interactive. The company acquired Crystal Dynamics in 1998, and owned numerous other assets. In 2005, parent Eidos was taken over by games publisher SCi. The combined company, SCi Entertainment Group, which was briefly renamed Eidos, was itself taken over by Square Enix in 2009.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sumo Digital</span> British video game developer

Sumo Digital Ltd. is a British video game developer based in Sheffield and the principal subsidiary of Sumo Group since 2017. The company was founded in 2003 by four former members of the management team of Infogrames Studios and, as of 2023, employs more than 1100 people in 16 studios. The developer's model has been described as work for hire.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Deep Silver</span> Austrian video game publisher

Deep Silver is an Austrian video game publisher and a division of Plaion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2K (company)</span> American video game publisher

2K is an American video game publisher based in Novato, California. The company was founded as a subsidiary of Take-Two Interactive in January 2005 through the 2K Games and 2K Sports sub-labels. The nascent label incorporated several development studios owned by Take-Two, including Visual Concepts and Kush Games, which had been acquired the day before. Originally based in New York City, 2K moved to Novato in 2007. A third label, 2K Play, was added in September 2007. 2K is governed by David Ismailer as president and Phil Dixon as chief operating officer. It operates a motion capture studio in Petaluma, California.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rockstar Vienna</span> Austrian video game developer

Rockstar Productions GmbH was an Austrian video game developer and a studio of Rockstar Games based in Vienna. Peter Baustädter, Niki Laber, and Hannes Seifert founded the studio as Neo Software in January 1993 when they neared the completion of Whale's Voyage. The game led Neo Software to early success, as did 1994's The Clue!, which sold over a million copies, and enabled the company to relocate from Seifert's house in Hirtenberg to Vienna. After Neo Software's Alien Nations sold more than a million copies in 1999, Computec Media acquired a majority stake in the company, seeking it to produce online games. It then sold the studio and several other businesses to Gameplay.com in February 2000, which sold Neo Software to Take-Two Interactive in January 2001 in exchange for a Take-Two subsidiary Gameplay.com had obtained earlier.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zoë Mode</span>

Zoë Mode was a subsidiary studio of Kuju Entertainment based in Brighton, England. Zoë Mode's games portfolio covered a variety of genres and comprised big-brand entertainment, original social games and innovative gameplay use of motion capture technologies such as the PlayStation EyeToy and Xbox 360 Kinect. They developed EyeToy: Play, SingStar, Disney Sing It and Zumba franchises in music and party games. Zoë Mode was also known for creating Crush, Chime and Haunt.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Venom Games</span> British video game developer

Venom Games Limited was a British video game developer based in Gateshead, England. The studio was established by Peter Johnson in 2003 and succeeded Rage Newcastle. Take-Two Interactive acquired the company in 2004, where it became part of the 2K label in 2005 and was closed down in July 2008.

Rocksteady Studios Limited is a British video game developer based in London, England. Founded on 13 December 2004, the studio is best known for its work in the Batman: Arkham series. The company is a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Games.

Black Rock Studio Limited was a British video game developer based in Brighton, England. It was a division of Disney Interactive Studios. The studio was founded by Tony Beckwith in 1998 as Pixel Planet. It was acquired by the Climax Group in 1999 and was renamed Climax Brighton. In 2004, it became Climax Racing, as the Climax Group rebranded its studios. On 28 September 2006, it was acquired by DIS and was eventually renamed Black Rock Studio in 2007. The last game the studio developed for the Climax Group was MotoGP '07, which was completed after its acquisition by Buena Vista Games. The name is derived from a district in Brighton. In early 2011, the company faced lay-offs and was forced to abandon sequels for Pure and Split/Second: Velocity. Despite good reviews for both games, Disney turned down both sequels to focus on freemium content.

Team17 Group plc is a British video game developer and publisher based in Wakefield, England. The venture was created in December 1990 through the merger of British publisher 17-Bit Software and Swedish developer Team 7. At the time, the two companies consisted of and were led by Michael Robinson, Martyn Brown and Debbie Bestwick, and Andreas Tadic, Rico Holmes and Peter Tuleby, respectively. Bestwick later became Team17's chief executive officer until 1 January 2024. After their first game, Full Contact (1991) for the Amiga, the studio followed up with multiple number-one releases on that platform and saw major success with Andy Davidson's Worms in 1995, the resulting franchise of which still remains as the company's primary development output, having developed over 20 entries in it.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bethesda Game Studios Dallas</span> American video game developer

Bethesda Game Studios Dallas LLC is an American video game developer based in Dallas. Founded in 2007 by Tom Mustaine, Marc Tardif, and Shawn Green, the company was briefly owned by 6waves Lolapps in 2012 but returned to independence after the publisher laid off all development staff. ZeniMax Media acquired Escalation Studios in February 2017, and it became part of Bethesda Game Studios as Bethesda Game Studios Dallas in August 2018.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mediatonic</span> British video game developer

Mediatonic Limited is a British video game developer based in London. The company was founded in September 2005 by Brunel University students Dave Bailey and Paul Croft, releasing their first game, Snowman Salvage in December that year. Initially a work-for-hire studio for Flash games, Mediatonic has developed original games for other platforms, including Murder by Numbers and Fall Guys. As of June 2020, Mediatonic employs 230 people in four studios and is part of Tonic Games Group, which is a subsidiary of Epic Games since March 2021.

DC Studios Inc. was a British video game developer based in Montreal, Canada. Founded by Mark Greenshields in December 1999, it was originally located in Glasgow, and later expanded to Montreal, Edinburgh, and Dublin. Following the underperformance of State of Emergency 2, which the company had acquired from VIS Entertainment, DC Studios closed its Scotland operations in June 2006. The remaining Montreal office was closed in September 2007. Both offices were replaced by ones for Greenshields' newer venture, Firebrand Games.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">TT Games</span> British holding company

TT Games Limited is a British holding company and a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Games. The company was established in 2005 through the merger of developer Traveller's Tales and publisher Giant Interactive. Its other branches include developer TT Fusion, animation studio TT Animation and mobile game studio TT Odyssey. The company is best known for its video games based on the Lego construction toy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sumo Group</span> British video game holding company

Sumo Group Limited is a British video game holding company based in Sheffield. It was formed in December 2017 as the parent company for Sumo Digital and Atomhawk, followed by its initial public offering on the London Stock Exchange later that month. Another of Sumo Group's subsidiaries is Secret Mode, a publisher established in March 2021. After purchasing a minority stake in Sumo Group in November 2019, Tencent wholly acquired the company in January 2022.

References

  1. ↑ "Climax Celebrates 15th Birthday With Plans To Expand". Climax. 3 February 2003. Archived from the original on 28 September 2004.
  2. ↑ "Images Software". New Computer Express. 8 October 1991.
  3. ↑ "Profile". Climax. Archived from the original on 8 May 1999.
  4. ↑ "Services". Climax. Archived from the original on 8 May 1999.
  5. ↑ "Tony Beckwith & Greg Michael to join Climax Group". Climax. 7 November 1999. Archived from the original on 18 August 2003.
  6. ↑ Hong, Quang (12 June 2000). "Climax Acquires Anthill". Gamasutra . Archived from the original on 10 April 2020. Retrieved 10 April 2020.
  7. 1 2 "The Climax Group's acquisition of Anthill Studios". Climax. 12 June 2000. Archived from the original on 18 August 2003.
  8. ↑ "Climax Brighton Moves to New High-Tec Studio". Climax. 22 August 2000. Archived from the original on 18 August 2003.
  9. ↑ "Climax Promises life after Charybdis". Climax. 24 April 2001. Archived from the original on 19 August 2003.
  10. ↑ Bramwell, Tom (12 June 2001). "Climax Group swallows Syrox whole". Eurogamer . Archived from the original on 10 April 2020. Retrieved 10 April 2020.
  11. ↑ "Climax Appoints New Chairman". Gamasutra . 17 July 2001. Archived from the original on 10 April 2020. Retrieved 10 April 2020.
  12. ↑ "Climax To Open New Production Facility". Climax. 1 July 2002. Archived from the original on 19 August 2003.
  13. ↑ Jenkins, David (15 October 2003). "Climax Opens New Sound Department". Gamasutra . Archived from the original on 10 April 2020. Retrieved 10 April 2020.
  14. ↑ Fahey, Rob (29 November 2004). "Climax rebrands studios in "virtual merger"". GamesIndustry.biz . Archived from the original on 16 February 2021. Retrieved 10 April 2020.
  15. ↑ "Silent Hill: Origins for PSP Reviews". Metacritic . Archived from the original on 25 January 2020. Retrieved 10 April 2020.
  16. ↑ MCV Staff (1 February 2008). "Climax Kingston closed". MCV/Develop . Archived from the original on 23 September 2020. Retrieved 10 April 2020.
  17. ↑ Fahey, Mike (6 April 2009). "Silent Hill: Shattered Memories Re-Does Wii, PS2, And PSP". Kotaku . Archived from the original on 20 October 2020. Retrieved 10 April 2020.
  18. ↑ Santa Maria, Alex (28 August 2019). "Why THQ Nordic was the surprise star of Gamescom 2019". GameRevolution . Archived from the original on 28 September 2020. Retrieved 5 September 2019.
  19. ↑ Barker, Sammy (19 August 2019). "There's a Drone Champions League, And Now There's a Game". Push Square . Archived from the original on 5 September 2019. Retrieved 5 September 2019.
  20. ↑ Price, Dan. "DIRT RALLY 2.0". Climax Studios. Archived from the original on 29 July 2020. Retrieved 29 July 2020.
  21. ↑ Martin, Matt (20 December 2007). "Climax shoots down acquisition rumours". GamesIndustry.biz . Archived from the original on 3 October 2012. Retrieved 10 April 2020.
  22. ↑ Partis, Danielle (22 April 2021). "Keywords acquires Climax for up to £43m". GamesIndustry.biz . Archived from the original on 22 April 2021. Retrieved 22 April 2021.
  23. ↑ Michael French (6 July 2007). "Studio unveils new identity". MCV. Archived from the original on 6 December 2007. Retrieved 1 July 2009.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.