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作者: RestlessDream 时间: 2007-5-15 11:54 标题: 【业界】next-gen.biz网站评出欧洲工作室50强

EUROPE'S TOP 50 GAME STUDIOS
By Joe Keiser
Europe is a creative power-house, offering up some of the most excitingand marketable games and franchises in worldwide gaming. As part of ourglobal editorial focus, Next Generation is proud to present the top 50developers in Europe, and the European nations that provide the most tothe game industry. To arrive at this list of the top 50 game development houses in Europe,we have weighted studios based on product sales and revenue in both theUnited States and Europe, using a variey of resources includingavailable market research data. We have also taken the criticalresponse to each studio’s products over 2006 and 2007, gathering thatdata from review score aggregate sites. In addition, we have predictedeach studio’s future performance potential, based both on pastperformance and announced but unreleased products. This has notresulted in a purely scientific analysis, so some of the positioning onthe list is also based on good old-fashioned intuition.

Wehave given each studio a point score based on the result of theanalysis – the top rated studio on the list is worth 50 points, thenumber two studio 49 points, and so on. We have summed these pointsbased on the developer’s home country, creating a leaderboard of thetop European nations in the game industry. We present this leaderboardin the spirit of friendly international competition!

1. England – 887 Points
2. France – 109 Points
3. Scotland – 77 Points
4. Sweden – 58 Points
5. Germany – 51 Points
6. Denmark – 37 Points
7. The Netherlands – 16 Points
8. Ukraine – 12 Points
9. Norway – 9 Points
10. Romania – 8 Points
11. Finland – 7 Points
12. Russia – 4 Points

Itis worth noting is that a lot of development houses may have studiosacross Europe or the world, or may have the primary corporate office inthe United States but primary creative talent in Europe. In these caseswe only considered where the creative talent was, and consideredinternal studios as individual entities if such delineations wereclear. Only in cases where studio development was incredibly global anddecentralized did we consider the corporate office the studio home aswell. Click through for the top 50...

Sega Driving Studio
Solihull, West Midlands, England
1 Points

SegaDriving Studio is the newest studio on this list, created by Sega justlast year. The publisher specifically chose to base the developer inthe UK to take advantage of the region’s talented racing gamedevelopers, so while Sega Driving Studio, new as it is, has yet torelease a product, it is clear how Sega plans on using the company inits long-term plans to return to dominance. Sega Rally Revo,the next entry in the greatly respected and long dormant arcade rallyracer, is the first game from the company and should be out this year.In addition, rumors abound that Sega Driving Studio is also working ona project based on new IP.

Playlogic
Breda, The Netherlands
2 Points

Playlogicis primarily known as a publisher of distinctly European products,taking on the international publishing duties for outfits like Russia’sAkella and Poland’s Metropolis software. So the company gets some kudosfor that, but it also has an internal development studio, known asPlaylogic Game Factory. Not a lot has come out of the developer – itdid ship classic-styled shooter Xyanide last year, and announced butnever released the Eyetoy-based spell-casting game Wizard of Funk.Currently though, the studio is working on a very mysterious nextgeneration game, which is now only known as Project Delta.
(Pictured: Project Delta concept art)

Blue Byte
Düsseldorf, Germany
3 Points

BlueByte is one of Germany’s oldest extant studios, and in the 90’s createdmuch-loved classics such as the RPG Albion. Its most enduring legacywas started in 1993 with the charming real-time strategy game TheSettlers, a franchise that came into its own in 1996 with The SettlersII. That sophomore effort remains the series’ best-loved entry, andBlue Byte recently updated that game with a special The Settlers II: 10th Anniversary Edition for Europe.

Nival Interactive
Moscow, Russia
4 Points

Turn-basedor real-time, high fantasy or historical, Nival Interactive has alwaysbeen known for delivering well-tuned strategy gameplay across genresand settings. Its games have always been well liked, though perhapsnone were better received than the company’s 2004 game Silent Storm.That title successfully channeled Jagged Alliance and became a cultclassic in its own right, and this is likely what drew Ubisoft’s eye tothe developer. The publisher had recently acquired Heroes of Might andMagic from the defunct 3DO, and passed development duty for Heroes of Might and Magic Vto Nival. By most accounts, the result was well in line with seriesexpectations – a high compliment given the pedigree of the franchise.

Juice Games
Warrington, Cheshire, England
5 Points

JuiceGames was very nearly a casualty of the Acclaim implosion of 2004, butTHQ saw something in the little company’s premiere title, theunderground street racing game Juiced. The publisher picked up therights to the game, and while most critics failed to see what THQ didthe acquisition nevertheless paid off huge – Juiced has sold over 1.5million copies since its release two years ago. Now Juice Games is awholly-owned subsidiary of THQ, and is working on the next generationfollow-up to its first overwhelming success. Juiced 2: Hot Import Nights will be released later this year.

Starbreeze Studios
Uppsala, Sweden
6 Points

Starbreezeis a Swedish studio that has not been particularly prolific, and yetmay be really coming into its own as something special. The company’slast game was The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay(developed in association with Tigon Games), a true game of the yearcandidate in 2004 that managed to be technically astounding anduniquely entertaining as well as, somehow, a movie tie-in game. Sothere’s definitely something to Starbreeze, which makes its next game –the comic-book based, 2K Games-published The Darkness – one to watch.

Remedy
Espoo, Finland
7 Points

Remedy’sshort history has nevertheless given the company a reputation for longdevelopment cycles, albeit cycles that result in slow-cooked pieces ofgroundbreaking innovation. Max Payne is currently the only example ofthis, but endless games have swiped the bullet time mechanic from thatfilm-noir shooter. Remedy may be soft now, but that is likely becauseit is carrying a big gun; the psychological thriller Alan Wake,a game which the company fascinatingly compares to the bizarre cult TVshow Twin Peaks. It is highly likely the long wait for this game willbe well worth it.

Ubisoft Romania
Bucharest, Romania
8 Points

Ubisoft’sRomanian studio is one of the publisher’s oldest internal developers,and the first studio seeded by Ubisoft outside of the company’s nativeFrance. Founded in 1992, it has long since grown into an importantbranch of the corporation, focusing on far more than just gamedevelopment – though it is still a strong internal developer for thecompany to be sure. In 2006 Ubisoft Romania provided Blazing Angels:Squadrons of WWII in rapid succession for every system to see release,providing Ubisoft with an uncontested product in the flight actiongenre at the beginning of each new console’s life. Most recently,Ubisoft Romania has released the well-received Silent Hunter 4: Wolves of the Pacific.

Funcom
Oslo, Norway
9 Points

Funcomis a unique company. In an age of shooters and MMORPGs, the studio’smost visible 2006 product was an old-school adventure game supported bya Norwegian government grant for the enhancement of art. That game,Ragnar Tørnquist’s Dreamfall, was wonderfully, expectedly esoteric,which makes Funcom’s recent announcement of the episodic follow-upDreamfall: Chapters even more exciting. Yet what most people areprobably waiting for from the company is Age of Conan.In Funcom’s typically atypical fashion, this is a game that will startas a single player RPG and evolve into an MMORPG as the story winds tocompletion.

Rebellion
Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
10 Points

Rebellionhas spent the last several years earning its paycheck on PSP, withgames like Miami Vice and the port of EA’s From Russia With Love. Suchproducts do not necessarily show what a studio can do however, which iswhy the internationally released Rogue Trooper wassuch a nice surprise. The British comic book license perplexed criticsand was lost on an American audience, though most liked it anyway(Rogue Trooper was primarily derided for being too short, a complaintreserved for enjoyable products). In Britain it was nominated for twoprestigious BAFTA awards. Clearly, Rebellion is on the way up.

Beautiful Game Studios
London, England
11 Points

BeautifulGame Studios was a company founded in a quarrel, an internally createdteam formed by Eidos after the publisher split with Sports Interactiveand needed somebody to continue the successful Championship Managersimulation series. It was, and continues to be, a difficult task tolive up to – fans have canonized the classic SI-developed managementgames, after all – but to the credit of Beautiful Game Studios there isan audience that comes back to it, year after year, to see how itsgoing. By all accounts, BGS has and continues to improve; the latestwork to show this is Championship Manager 2007.

GSC Game World
Kiev, Ukraine
12 Points

GSCGame World is a fairly prolific developer, but the company has largelybeen niche focused since it moved from multimedia and educationsoftware into video games in 1997. Mostly, GSC Game World has madegames in the Cossacks series, and while those RTS games are known forthe epic scale of its battles they’re not particularly well knownotherwise. So it’s nice to see the developer break out a bit with thelong-delayed S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, ahorrifying and original first person shooter that managed to gaincritical acclaim despite the ridiculous length of its development cycle.

SCE Studio Cambridge
Cambridge, England
13 Points

Originallycalled Millennium Games, SCE Studio Cambridge was purchased and renamedby Sony back in the PlayStation days, giving SCEE ownership of theMediEvil franchise (they did not however get the developer’s innovativeCreatures games). While that series has been rather long-lived –MediEvil Resurrection saw release in 2005 – Cambridge has done a greatdeal of interesting PS2 work, including cult hits Primal andGhosthunter. Its most recent published work was last year’s PS2 gamebased on the staggeringly popular TV show 24; currently the company is under the radar, but the studio’s potential in the next generation is huge.

Guerilla Games
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
14 Points

GuerillaGames has had a recent history mired in Sony-related controversy.Directly prior to the all-out acquisition of the Dutch studio in 2005,Sony made a big deal of Guerilla’s Killzone – and as a result theinteresting but flawed shooter was labeled a disappointment, unable tolive up to the massive hype. The follow-up to the game, Killzone PS3,still has yet to live down its 2005 E3 video presentation – the famouspre-rendered video that was presented as real-time PS3-powered footage.And yet when Guerilla wasn’t being handled by marketers, as it wasn’tfor the far lower profile PSP Killzone: Liberation, it actually put outa critically hailed piece of work. The lesson here is: please just letGuerilla do its job.
(Pictured: Killzone PS3 pre-rendered presentation footage)

Magenta Software
Liverpool, Merseyside, England
15 Points

Magentahas long been working in the field of children’s licensed games, and isprobably best known in the states for games based on Cat in The Hat andStuart Little 3 – which is to say Magenta isn’t known in the US at all.It’s likely the company isn’t all too well known in Europe either, butthen its last Europe-only title was probably its highest profile yet.That game, Buzz! Junior: Jungle Party, used the PS2 quiz gamecontrollers for minigames instead of question answering, resulting inan intuitive party game that crossed the generational gap and sold toeveryone. They are now looking to follow up on that success with Buzz! Junior: RoboJam.

Gusto Games
Bloxham, Oxfordshire, England
16 Points

Gustois a studio that takes its sports very seriously. Founded in 2003, itquickly took on the duty of porting Eidos’ Eurocentric ChampionshipManager games to consoles, expanding the audience of the intricatesoccer league simulator. In addition to a love of “footie”, last yearthe company pledged a new dedication to golf with a serious, pure takeon the sport in ProStroke Golf World Tour 2007. Currently Gusto is continuing its work in that genre with an as-yet unnamed golf project.

Exient
Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
17 Points

Exientis a company that sweats the small stuff – it’s a developer thatfocuses on handhelds, including both the proprietary game formats andwireless. But then small formats are big business, and Exient has thesports franchises that really drive sales internationally. It has donethe Madden games for Nintendo’s handhelds in America since 2004, andthe internationally successful FIFA soccer games on those sameplatforms. It even has its own soccer franchise, Total Soccer – thoughits safe to say that as long as the company has the EA contracts it iscurrently working, it will continue to be a powerful leader in the DSand wireless space.
(Pictured: NFL Madden 2007 for the Nintendo DS)

Reflections Interactive
Newcastle, Tyne and Wear, England
18 Points

Reflectionsstarted life as a uniquely British studio – one of the company’searliest titles, the visually lush Shadow of the Beast, became abest-selling, iconic Amiga game and a piece of cultural historyvirtually exclusive to the European gaming experience. More recently,the studio’s Driver and Destruction Derby franchises have seen moreinternational success. Though Driver has waned considerably since its32-bit salad days, hope still remains. The Driver franchise was sold byan ailing Atari last year, leaving Reflections with shiny new contractsto develop PS3 and PSP iterations of the series for Ubisoft, a companythat surely expects that $24 million cost to pay dividends. Theyrecently worked with Sumo Digital on the PSP game Driver 76.

Avalanche Studios
Stockholm, Sweden
19 Points

Stockholm-basedAvalanche is only four years old, but is already Sweden’s largestindependent developer. The company managed to come out the gate inuniquely strong fashion –its first game, the Eidos-published Just Cause,was respected for its unique stunt system and strong Caribbean flavordespite some flaws in other areas. In short, it was the kind offreshman effort that makes the company an interesting future prospect.While it has yet to officially announce what its next project actuallyis, reliable scuttlebutt says that an Avalanche-developed Just Cause 2is in the works.

Eden Games
Lyon, France
20 Points

TheLyon, France-based Eden Games has been a force in racing games since itwas founded internally at Infogrames in 1998. Spinning off into its owncompany, the studio even had a brief stint on EA’s Need for Speedseries. Eden has found much greater success with its own racingproperties however – games like V-Rally and Test Drive have been wellreceived in all iterations by Eden. Now a flagship racing franchise forAtari, the latest Test Drive Unlimited was another win for Eden.Currently the company is working on the next generation Alone in the Dark.

Team17
Ossett, West Yorkshire, England
21 Points

Afixture in the “britsoft” community, the 16-year-old Team17 hasremained proudly independent since its inception. Its lasting legacy togaming is the Worms franchise, which started on the Amiga in 1994 andcontinues to be updated by the company today, most recently in 2006’s Worms: Open Warfarefor the DS and PSP and in this year’s Xbox Live Arcade version of thegame. The company definitely knows how to make charming, classic-styledfun – no doubt as a result of this it is also steward of the DMA Design(now Rockstar)-created Lemmings franchise – a series it also did wellby on the PSP last year.

Frontier
Cambridge, England
22 Points

Cambridge’sFrontier Developments has one of the most illustrious pedigrees in thehistory of European development. The founder of the studio, DavidBraben, was one of the minds behind 1982’s hugely influential spacesimulation and trading game Elite – a game that used 3D graphics and“emergent” gameplay decades before the rest of the industry. Brabenincorporated Frontier in 1994. The company’s most recent title – themepark simulator Thrillville – sold well, and its upcoming game The Outsiderlooks to take advantage of the next generation consoles to produce anew experience using new IP. After that project is concluded, Brabenhas stated that work will begin anew on Elite 4.

Relentless Studios
Brighton, East Sussex, England
23 Points

Relentlessis another England-based studio that doesn’t exist in any significantform in the American market, but is doing important, profitable workelsewhere. Along with SCEE Studios London it has put strong effortsinto Eyetoy games like Eyetoy: Groove and Eyetoy: Kinetic, though thestudio’s biggest success hasn’t even seen a stateside release. That’sthe PS2 game show game series Buzz!, products packedwith questions and proprietary “big red button” controllers that makethe game immediately accessible. As a result of this it sold to gamersand non-gamers alike, and with the American market clearly ripening forsuch products Relentless may only become bigger.

Free Radical
Sandiacre, Derbyshire, England
24 Points

FreeRadical was founded by part of the team that made seminal N64first-person shooter Goldeneye at Rare, and has proven throughout thelast console generation that it more than knows how to follow up onsuch success. Responsible for innovative physics game Second Sight andthe brilliant and witty – yet sadly underappreciated – TimeSplitterstrilogy, Free Radical continue to be masters of exciting multiplayershooting experiences. So it’s unsurprising that the company’s upcomingwork, the Ubisoft-published Haze, looks brilliantdespite flying under the radar yet again. It’s definitely a studio thatcould make this generation its own, and is one to look out for over thenext few years.

Climax Studios
Portsmouth, Hampshire, England
25 Points

Hampshire’sClimax Studios is a versatile company. Best known for its efforts inthe racing genre, the company provided the Xbox with its Moto GP seriesand Sony with its multiplatform ATV Offroad Fury games, both of whichare now established and well-respected brands. But the company has alsodabbled in the action-RPG genre with Sudeki and in the first-personshooter genre with Tron 2.0 Killer App. Most recently Climax hasprovided the 360 with its first motorcycle simulation racer in Moto GP2006; earlier this year the studio also branched out into thethird-person action genre with the tie-in game to the Hollywood hitGhost Rider. They are now working on Moto GP 2007.

Eurocom
Derby, Derbyshire, England
26 Points

Eurocomis nearing the end of two decades in the game industry, and in itsrecent years has taken to the big money that comes with franchisecontinuations and movie tie-in games. There’s no doubting that it’sgood at this job – the company’s most recent work, the multi-platformIce Age 2: The Meltdown, was far more warmly received by critics thanusual titles of its ilk. Naturally, it also sold by the hundreds ofthousands. Eurocom is currently moving its multiplatform licensedefforts to the next generation; the Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End action game should see release alongside the movie in May.

Realtime Worlds
Dundee, Scotland
27 Points

Theyoung Realtime Worlds had a legacy to live up to upon its creation,founded as it was by the father and erstwhile designer of Grand TheftAuto David Jones. That the company managed to live up to its billingwas impressive, but Crackdown was an impressive game– it took the sandbox mentality of Grand Theft Auto but trimmed it toits essence, creating a focused, entertaining experience that couldonly have been made by someone who truly understands the strengths ofthe genre. Crackdown sold well, so expect lots more from RealtimeWorlds – its next effort, a sort of cops-and-robbers MMO titled APB, isdue in 2008.

SCE Studios Liverpool
Liverpool, Merseyside, England
28 Points

SCEStudios Liverpool has a long and fascinating history. Originally knownas Psygnosis, the company developed eclectic games for a variety ofplatforms, lending itself to early Sony Computer Entertainmentacquisition in 1993. The studio has since been a go-to first partysoftware house for SCEE, the futuristic racing WipEout series being aparticularly iconic franchise for the PlayStation brand. WipEoutcontinues to be a focus for the company – Sony recently announced thePSP-exclusive WipEout Pulse as a Liverpool effort –though the studio also delivers regular Formula One games, mostrecently February’s PS3-only Formula One Championship Edition.

Evolution Studios
Runcorn, Cheshire, England
29 Points

TheCheshire-based Evolution was the first non-Sony owned European studioto work on the PS2, having been passed the World Rally Championshiplicense by SCEE almost upon the studio’s inception. This seeminglyniche title was ably handled by the young company, and went on togarner fantastic reviews and outperform in the market. Naturally, thisensured that Evolution was married to WRC through five iterations andthe entire lifetime of the PS2. With the release of the PS3 however,there was a new opportunity for Evolution – and the studio ran withthat opportunity, creating the well-marketed, well-received PS3exclusive MotorStorm.

Kuju Entertainment
Godalming, Surrey, England
30 Points

Thepublicly traded Kuju Entertainment has development studios all acrossEngland, all of which are working on interesting, high-potentialproducts. Perhaps the highest profile of these is the sequel to thecompany’s own Battalion Wars, a Nintendo-published offering that willbe exclusive to the Wii. Being made for EA is Rail Simulator, and Atariis getting a PSP-exclusive turn-based game in Dungeons & DragonsTactics. Perhaps most interesting however is the PSP game Kuju ismaking for Sega. Entitled CRUSH, it promisesfascinating level-based puzzles that cull their brain-teasing qualitiesfrom the relationship between their 2D and 3D representations.

Sumo Digital
Sheffield, Yorkshire, England
31 Points

TheSheffield-based Sumo Digital is a fine journeyman studio. It’s donewell for itself with casual projects like Go Sudoku!, but is reallymaking a name for itself as a company that does justice to established,well-respected IP. This is true regardless of genre – Sega has tappedthe studio for both Virtua Tennis 3 and the recentOutrun racing games, and Revolution has passed along the Broken Swordadventure series to Sumo. All of the company’s efforts on these serieswere appreciated by hard to please franchise fans. Now Sumo is workingon several unannounced projects across a variety of platforms – thekind of work only a good reputation and solid catalog can provide.

Bizarre Creations
Liverpool, Merseyside, England
32 Points

Itwas largely expected that the Liverpool-based Bizarre Creations wouldscore a big hit with Project Gotham Racing 3, the Xbox 360’s firsthugely hyped exclusive racing game. What wasn’t known is how importantthe comparatively tiny Geometry Wars Project would become to theadoption of Xbox Live Arcade – yet that game has been the poster childfor the service since the beginning. Now the company is at theforefront in both these spaces – it just released Boom Boom Rocket toXBLA, and is currently working on Project Gotham Racing 4, in additionto the upcoming third-person shooting game The Club.

DICE Sweden
Stockholm, Sweden
33 Points

Oneof Sweden’s biggest studios, DICE has created such successful games asMicrosoft’s popular Rallisport Challenge games. Of course, it’s bestknown for the Battlefield series of games – 2002’s Battlefield 1942’scombination of vehicular mayhem and team-based multiplayer combatchanged the way WWII shooters were played competitively. That game waspublished by EA, and surely paved the way for EA’s purchase of thecompany, an acquisition which was completed last year. Now DICE is afully-fledged EA Studio, a fact that will only be beneficial to itsstill popular Battlefield franchise. Battlefield: Bad Company,the first game in the series to feature a major single-player campaign,will be released on next generation consoles this year.

Splash Damage
Bromley, London, England
34 Points

Aprivate company born of the modding community, Splash Damage has beenworking on content for other studios for the better part of the decade.Its breakout success was the standalone multiplayer game Wolfenstein:Enemy Territory, a polished freeware title that continues to see hugepopularity years later. Today it is building on that success with thesoon to be released Enemy Territory: Quake Wars,which will bring the trademark team-based gameplay in huge fashion tothe Quake II universe. It’s expected that game will be a massivesuccess, and have a place in professional league lineups for years tocome.

Rare
Twycross, Leicestershire, England
35 Points

Althoughfounding members Chris and Tim Stamper left the company last year, Rareremains one of the big guns in Microsoft’s arsenal against its consolecompetition. Always a versatile developer, the company recently tried amedia salvo on the children’s market with last Christmas’ Viva Piñata.While that excellent game was criminally left on shelves by consumers,it nevertheless proved that this long-lived company still has it whereit counts. The studio’s most recent effort, the XBLA-only JetpacRefueled, is a strong reminder of the company’s Eurocentric roots.Currently Rare is working on the 360-exclusive Banjo-Kazooie 3, anessential title to give the 360 a more family-friendly image.

Creative Assembly
Southwater, West Sussex, England
36 Points

ThisSega-owned developer of West Sussex is one of the RTS genre’s mostrespected studios. From a long relationship with EA as a sports gamedeveloper, CA burst out of the 90’s with Shogun: Total War. Since thatgame it has been polishing and expanding the Total War series, pushingit into new historical periods even as the company raked in awards forits work – Total War is still considered one of the most technicallyimpressive, epic strategy series still running. Last year’s Medieval II: Total Warcontinued this trend of excellence – though the company has notannounced any new projects following that game’s November release.

IO Interactive
Copenhagen, Denmark
37 Points

IOInteractive is a studio that is more than capable of creating productsthat are both well wrought and controversial, a potent cocktail thathas put it at the forefront of Danish game development. Thoughresponsible for the critically loved Cold War-era nightmare FreedomFighters, the company has made its name with the Hitman series – afranchise that has captured its audience with its mechanical polish andcold, mercenary violence. Currently IO is working on Kane & Lynch: Dead Men, a high-profile action game that depicts the forced alliance between a brutal hired gun and a crazed killer.

Rockstar Leeds
Leeds, West Yorkshire, England
38 Points

FormerlyMobius Entertainment, the Leeds studio of Rockstar is dedicated solelyto handheld development. Immediately it became the PSP’s most importantdedicated studio – Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories was thesystem’s best selling title for most of the PSP’s first year. RockstarLeeds continues to support the system with PSP timed-exclusive GrandTheft Auto titles (the latest of these being 2006's Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories),as well as strong ports of Rockstar’s popular PS2 games like MidnightClub 3 and the Warriors. Naturally the company will be responsible forthe PSP version of the upcoming Manhunt 2, a title it will bedeveloping with the newly-formed, currently untested Rockstar London.

Blitz Games
Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, England
39 Points

Thestudios of Blitz Games are masters of the mass market. 2006 saw thecompany move millions of units through Burger King of all places, abrilliant bit of marketing that had consumers paying mere dollars toget games with their Whoppers – games that included significantadvertising as a core component of the products. Blitz has also doneblockbuster sales in the children’s market through publisher THQ; thecompany has been passed top-tier kid’s franchises like Bratz andSpongebob Squarepants, and the result has been multi-platform licensedgames such as Bratz: Forever Diamondz that rake incash. As of now Blitz’s mature division Volatile Games has shelvedzombie game Possession and is working on an unannounced project.

Codemasters
Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, England
40 Points

Codemastersis one of the oldest games houses in Europe, buttering its breadprimarily with soccer and soccer management simulations – games thathold the same position in the European market that EA Tiburon’sfootball games have in the United States. But Codemasters is not just adeveloper – it’s an international publisher as well, so while itprovides Europe with cricket games it also brings well regarded racinggames like Colin McRae and TOCA Race Driver across the Atlantic. Butthen those racing games, the latest of which is the upcoming ColinMcRae game DiRT, are developed by Codemasters too,giving the company a well-deserved reputation for delivering exactlywhat its audience wants, no matter where that audience is.

Sports Interactive
Islington, London, England
41 Points

AnAmerican would probably give you a quizzical look if asked aboutLondon’s Sports Interactive, but the company is a big deal on the otherside of the Atlantic. This is entirely because of the company’s soccermanagement simulations – SI-developed games like the early ChampionshipManager, and currently Football Manager 2007 andWorldwide Soccer Manager 2007 are deep, involving takes on the ins andouts of the beautiful game, and people outside the US go absolutelynuts over them – and this should be doubly true when the recentlyannounced first online version of Football Manager is released. As aresult it has an unusual place in the industry – Sports Interactive isa powerful, lucrative studio, and it did so without the US market atall.

Lionhead
Twycross, Leicestershire, England
42 Points

Thecompany founded by industry legend Peter Molyneux has the samereputation as that of its leader – Lionhead develops high-concept,imaginative games of astounding ambition and scope. Take as an examplethe company’s first effort, the incredibly unusual Black & White –it mixed the god game genre Molyneux created with pet-rearingsimulation into a captivating cocktail that many consider anuntouchable classic. Of course, Lionhead is better known for the hugelypopular action-RPG morality-focused Fable. The company is now workingon the hotly anticipated sequel to that game, Fable 2, and it’s already promised it will be, like all Lionhead’s past work, something special.
(Pictured: Fable 2 CG footage)

Ubisoft Montpellier
Montpellier, France
43 Points

UbisoftMontpelier is the Ubisoft studio that is credited with the recentprojects of Michel Ancel, the famous industry figure that createdRayman and Beyond Good and Evil. As such, it is a studio well-craftedto capture the vision of the man, and as his game designs are verynearly peerless, the results are uniformly good. 2005’s King Kong moviegame was a great example of this, a movie tie-in survival horrorfirst-person shooter that genuinely thrilled. The studio’s most recentproject, Rayman Raving Rabbids, continued the Raymantradition of delivering a uniquely French cartoon aesthetic to aninternational audience while also innovating with the Wii controls.

SCE Studios London
London, England
44 Points

SCEE’slargest studio is probably best known internationally for its 2003action game The Getaway, which drew acclaim for its well-detailed andrealistic depiction of modern London. The company has done interestingwork in many areas however – it innovated to a great degree in makingcameras work as gaming input devices with the earliest Eyetoy games,and has scored huge hits in Europe with the SingStar brand of karaokegames. Naturally, these days the company is being relied on to make bigPS3 games – it has an Arizona-set crime game named Eight Days in theworks, as well as the digital distribution-supported PS3 version of SingStar.

EA UK
Chertsey, Surrey, England
45 Points

TheChertsey-based UK campus of Electronic Arts pulls its weight in themega-publisher’s family of studios with the Harry Potter games. It hashad control of that movie tie-in series since 2004’s Harry Potter andthe Prisoner of Azkaban, and while those are naturally the games thatmove the most units for the studio the company has also worked onfranchise efforts like Criterion’s Burnout series – the recentthrowback title Burnout Dominator was an EA UK effort. Naturally, thecompany’s focus these days is on getting Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix out for every platform under the sun in time for the movie’s summer release – the Wii version is particularly interesting.

Ubisoft Paris
Paris, France
46 Points

Parisis home to both Ubisoft’s central headquarters and the company’s Parisdevelopment studio, so perhaps it is only natural that this studio getsprojects that are truly fundamental to the health of the publisher. Inthe last year Ubisoft Paris has spearheaded Ubisoft’s next generationstrategy with no less than two Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter games.The first of these was one of the 360’s best early titles, and thesequel improved nearly everything about it but added a far more focusedmultiplayer component as well. The studio also developed thepublisher’s flagship Wii product Red Steel, which went on to be a best-selling Wii game at launch.

Criterion
Guildford, Surrey, England
47 Points

Criterionheld the last generation of consoles in its thrall. Not only was thestudio a successful game development house with the dizzying, bombasticBurnout series of racers, the company’s Renderware middleware toolswere used in a plurality of console products – a staggering achievementthat gave EA a powerful competitive advantage when it purchasedCriterion in 2004. Also responsible for the hyperactive first-personshooter Black, Criterion is currently working on bringing both thesefranchises into the next generation. It has been said that Burnout Paradise will reinvent the series.

Crytek
Coburg, Germany
48 Points

Crytekis by any metric one of the most successful studios in the world, letalone Europe. The studio has only developed a single game, but thatgame was 2004’s Far Cry, a technological masterwork that continues tobe a popular franchise for Ubisoft. Now Crytek has a publishing partnerin EA, along with all of the money and marketing muscle that brings –and its upcoming 2007 game, Crysis, is among thehighest profile PC games of the year (only Spore has comparable buzzaround it). If screenshots are to be believed, Crytek is well on itsway to making all competition in the FPS genre obsolete.

Traveller's Tales
Knutsford, Cheshire, England
49 Points

Traveller’sTales is one of England’s most successful international market studiosthanks to a strong dedication to wide-appeal titles executed in strongfashion. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the company’s LEGO StarWars titles – 2006’s LEGO Star Wars II integrated thewell-loved Original Trilogy with the well-loved children’s buildingblocks, and the execution was infused with enough tongue-in-cheek humorto make the game appeal to children and adults alike. It sold throughby the million, so it’s hardly surprising that the company is lookingto continue that success with an upcoming LEGO Batman game. Betweenthat and the work being done on The Transformers movie tie-in, it’sclear TT will stay at the forefront of the industry.

Rockstar North
Edinburgh, Scotland
50 Points

Formerlyknown as DMA Design, the last game the creators of Lemmings made underthat name was a small piece named Grand Theft Auto III. Shortlythereafter its owner and publisher renamed the company Rockstar North,and under that name the studio went on to change the industry. GrandTheft Auto: Vice City and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas both set highwatermarks in their days for high technology and limitless sandboxgameplay – and we all know about the phenomenal sales and controversiesthat followed. Naturally Grand Theft Auto IV is on the way from the developer, in similar huge fashion.

作者: RestlessDream 时间: 2007-5-15 11:55

SCE Studios London 排第六，很强……恭喜xat～～

作者: 风之勇者 时间: 2007-5-15 12:04

引用:

原帖由 RestlessDream 于 2007-5-15 11:55 发表
SCE Studios London 排第六，很强……恭喜xat～～

丫还在睡觉吧:D :D :D

作者: goldenbough 时间: 2007-5-15 12:55

好帖子，欧洲当真是藏龙卧虎之地

作者: 没钱的命 时间: 2007-5-15 13:05

欧洲力量在崛起

作者: 没钱的命 时间: 2007-5-15 13:09

都是牛比STUDIO啊

作者: RestlessDream 时间: 2007-5-15 13:09

这个DICE很强……也是EA的，风景没得说……主页上有照片，工作环境太华丽了

战地2142就是他们做的……突然对《最差拍档》好感度＋10……

作者: segasin 时间: 2007-5-15 13:30

咋一看,以为sega的赛车工作室第一,晕...

很期待狮头的fable2,不知道今年有没有...

作者: RestlessDream 时间: 2007-5-15 13:31

引用:

原帖由 segasin 于 2007-5-15 13:30 发表
咋一看,以为sega的赛车工作室第一,晕...

很期待狮头的fable2,不知道今年有没有...

今年肯定没有

作者: segasin 时间: 2007-5-15 13:33

引用:

原帖由 RestlessDream 于 2007-5-15 13:31 发表

今年肯定没有

美梦被大叔吵醒

作者: segasin 时间: 2007-5-15 13:33

引用:

原帖由 RestlessDream 于 2007-5-15 13:31 发表

今年肯定没有

美梦被大叔吵醒

作者: 小二黑 时间: 2007-5-15 13:34

不知道他们都买股票吗？

作者: ztdkgtm 时间: 2007-5-15 13:38

似乎排名越后面越好?

作者: jump 时间: 2007-5-15 14:05

可怜的Nival...
可怜的Russia...

作者: west2046 时间: 2007-5-15 14:09

有爱啊！

作者: 小饼干 时间: 2007-5-15 14:34

伟大的SI 果然前10 :D

作者: Leny 时间: 2007-5-15 15:20

Traveller's Tales
Knutsford, Cheshire, England
49 Points

继续支持！！

作者: xat 时间: 2007-5-15 16:17

引用:

原帖由 RestlessDream 于 2007-5-15 11:55 发表
SCE Studios London 排第六，很强……恭喜xat～～

排名基于销量，而非游戏品质。
所以会有Dice，Rare，Creative Assembly排名靠后……
个人觉得育碧蒙彼利埃要比巴黎工作室强出不少。

欢迎光临 TGFC Lifestyle (http://club.tgfcer.com/)