Sierra to create more products, franchises based on its games

Sierra Entertainment has announced that it is willing to ramp up the development of new products based on four titles from different genres – real-time strategy, open world, first person shooters and children’s games.

The games, most of which have already been released, include F.E.A.R. as a new first-person shooter by Sierra followed by Prototype as an open-world action title from Radical Entertainment, a polished TimeShift from Sabre Interactive and a future development of The Spiderwick Chronicles as a movie based children’s game to be released on February 2008.

“On top of these four pillars of genres we’re going to create original IP (Intellectual Properties), and I would say we’re pretty solid in that direction compared to any other publisher,” said Martin Tremblay, president of Sierra Worldwide Studios. “We’re going to be up there with the big guys with regard to creating new franchises.”

Trembley added that compared to other Game Publishers on the market today, its’s still considered the new kid on the block and knows its sudden risk-taking strategy will surprise a lot of people.

Sierra’s Senior Marketing Executive, Al Simone, said the third party space is currently dominated by Electronic Arts:

“…and then there’s everybody else – maybe Activision has broken out of that pack a little bit – competing to be the number three. We have great respect for what EA’s been able to accomplish.

Do we expect our third party share to grow? Absolutely. It’s going to come on the back of innovation, very fresh product experiences, covering all the platforms. Will we be number one? It’s always going to be our goal, but that’s one that’s off in the distance future.”

Simone and Tremblay said their commitment to quality is there and they plan to take a real step forward in terms of the balance of licensed titles, original IP and strong sequels.”

Tremblay said he and his entire organization are more than committed to embracing the risks associated with creating original products and looks forward to generating intellectual properties across the board to bring quality games to the gaming community at a pace most third party companies have yet to achieve.

“I wouldn’t describe our appetite as being over-committed to either console or PC. Both platforms are viable and are a big part of what we do. It’s like a 60-20-20 split between consoles, handheld and PC,” Simone said. “We have many examples of bringing very high quality products to market, and what (Tremblay) and his team are bringing is a discipline to do that consistently, in a world where product investment has escalated versus the previous generation.”

Read [Game Industry Biz] Site [Sierra Entertainment]