Bruckheimer explains why movie games 'fail'

By Andrew Yoon
Even with James Cameron's name attached to it, the Avatar video game simply wasn't good. While a few games (Goldeneye, Chronicles of Riddick) manage to escape the "movie game curse," most licensed games are plagued by mediocrity. Jerry Bruckheimer, producer of the upcoming Prince of Persia movie, explained to Gamasutra that studios have "this business model where they know they'll sell X amount of games on that opening couple of weeks, and a lot of them do that, rather than take their time and create a wonderful game."

While such a conclusion is probably obvious to the average Joystiq reader, it's vindicating to hear a high-profile producer admit to such industry shortcomings. Bruckheimer does offer a reasonable solution: release licensed games alongside their movie counterparts' home video releases to give them more development time. "As long as it's a good game, people will play it," concluded Bruckheimer.

"The problem is, to really make a good game, it really takes a long time," explained Bruckheimer, whose game studio is taking its sweet time (to even announce a title). "So by the time you green-light a movie, it's a year to a year-and-a-half until it's out. That's too short a period for a video game to be made. It's a three-year process to get a really good game made, and that's where they fail."

Incidentally, Ubisoft's Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, which is tangentially related to Bruckheimer's film, will release ten days before the movie, following just about two years of development time.

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