About a week ago, a site bearing the name and logo of the old Sierra brand appeared on the Internet. Thing is, Sierra was bought by Activision and shut down a while ago, so its return was a bit of a surprise. But as the site mention Activision on it, people instead turned to asking what purpose Activision had in mind. Now it seems that they want a slice of the indie gaming pie that's grown so huge in the past few years.
“The indie movement is happening, and for Activision not to be involved in that... it has the big brands sure, but I think it would be a miss if we didn’t look at the indie movement as well.” said Sierra’s MacLean Marshall in an interview.
It was announced at Gamescom last week that Sierra already have two game projects to handle - a new King's Quest game and Geometry Wars 3. There will also be more projects, based on what catches the eye of the people at Activision or Sierra.
For around half a decade Activision has been narrowing down their IPs to a handful, but it seems now that they wish to broaden their reach once more to fill the gaps in their catalog and target audiences that maybe they aren't hitting right now.
Senior director of external development Bob Loya said of the decision to move into indie, “We wanted to do this stuff for a long time, and unfortunately there wasn’t a path in Activision to do it because we were focused on the big blockbusters... With digitally distributed games becoming bigger every year, we were able to make a compelling business argument that we could be financially successful doing this, while working with really cool indie talent on great IP.”
So that's why Sierra has returned - Activision want to start taking on indie talent. Think this'll turn out well for the indie developers? Tell us below.