Former Activision CEO somehow forgot the unforgettable

There’s a clip making the rounds today of former Activision Blizzard CEO — and all-around video game fandom boogeyman — Bobby Kotick recalling a failed acquisition and fumbling the details. On a video podcast for venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, featuring former EA exec Bing Gordon, Kotick confessed: “We actually had a bad acquisition. The company that was, um … in Manchester, that did the driving game for Xbox, and it was called, um …”

You can watch the whole thing here, around the 8-minute mark. So yeah, not a great look. But when I’m [checks Wikipedia] 62 years old, I suspect I may not remember something I did when I was [checks calculator app] 44 years old, which is basically how old I am now and I’m feeling a way about it. Will I remember writing this post? Who knows. But what I do remember is Bizarre Creations’ absolute showstopper of a game — one that my family still plays to this day.

No, not Blur — all respect to the Blur heads out there — and no, not “the driving game for Xbox,” though respect to the Project Gotham Racing fans as well. I’m of course talking about Geometry Wars, the game that helped establish a new kind of console game on Microsoft’s muscular sophomore effort and, in so doing, became arguably the Xbox 360’s best launch title. 

Originally included inside Project Gotham Racing 2 on the original Xbox, Geometry Wars is a simple twin-stick shooter: left stick controls the ship, and right stick fires. That’s it! In one of my first jobs as a video game journalist (RIP Joystiq), I covered the Xbox 360 launch in the days leading up to its November 2005 release, and Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved – as the high-definition Xbox Live Arcade version was called — immediately impressed. I wrote, “If [Project Gotham Racing 3] isn’t the highlight of the 360 launch, Bizzarre’s other creation surely is!” 

I stand by it! 

In the weeks and months that followed, the rest of the Joystiq staff and I watched the global leaderboards with some combination of wonder and shock. They scored what now? The novelty of this kind of retro game being played on a high-def game console with the internet baked into its very fabric was the smallest of hints as to what was to come for video games, but it was a potent dose. We reported out high scores (congrats Striker and xTHeDoGgx) and challenged each other on the friends leaderboards. 

And now, Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved remains a family favorite on the Steam Deck, where its bite-sized sessions coupled with some healthy father-son competition have reminded me how durable this game’s formula is, almost twenty years later. So even if you don’t remember the name of the studio, or the city it was based in — Liverpool, by the way — you should remember Geometry Wars. Activision did close Bizarre Creations in 2011, following the launch of racing title Blur, and after some various moves, a handful of that team has reconstituted itself at Lucid Games, who managed to release Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions in 2014, marking the franchise’s first PlayStation release.  

And if you haven’t played it, I have good news for you! You can still purchase the original on the Xbox store for the same $4.99 it cost in 2005, or on Steam where it’s currently going for $1.99 – that’s less than a gas station coffee! If you’re more of a PlayStation person, you can snag Geometry Wars 3 for $14.99 which is basically the price of a really fancy coffee nowadays (don’t fact-check me). 

I’m curious if any of you share my fondness for this game; let me know below. See you on the leaderboards.