Vicarious Visions was developing Black Ops 2 for Vita

A PlayStation Vita version of Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 had been in development at handheld-specialist Vicarious Visions before being canned by Activision, a new report has claimed.

[porkChop]

Great idea. Let's cancel a "flawed" version of a good game game and give them a half-assed one instead.

[Welshy]

#Activision

Colour me surprised...

[XB1_PS4]

I got the bundled Declassified game. Only because the assassin's creed one was out of stock.. I figured how bad could it REALLY be, as it turns out it's REALLY bad. As much as everyone likes to bag on COD, a good port of BLOPS2 on Vita would have been amazing. To top it off, they could have possibly worked out the cross play for it also.. I wish Activision didn't think of us as money bags. I want them to have some kind of self respect and only release good, entertaining products. That will most certainly not happen this gen at least. Fingers crossed for next gen. :)

Oh btw, this is the only article I've ever seen on N4G with NO disagrees.. That's liable to change by the time you've read this though.

[HammadTheBeast]

Get LittleBigPlanet Vita, people make better shooters than Declassified in it lol.

[UltraVegito]

Makes me wonder what blacks ops 2 on vita would be like *-*
seriously though what were they smoking to decide to ditch a "flawed" product for the monstrosity that is CoDBoD

[MuhammadJA]

What a waste.

[Yodagamer]

So instead of fixing the flawed version, they can it and give us a crappy one with more bugs than a woodland forest. This is the same crap that killed guitar hero and Tony hawk.

[blackbirdi]

wtf !!!!!!!!!

[Marked]

Activision noticed the lack of pillow talk from microsoft.....remembering their vows "thow shalt not worship anyone above me" They quickly destroyed the golden vita and replaced it with a pile of shit.

[SilentNegotiator]

The way certain Xbox golden boys (the circle that MS pays a ridiculous amount to for early DLC and such, like $50M for DLC that will never make close to that back) snub anything playstation sometimes makes me paranoid about what's going on behind the curtains. Mostly because they usually snub in a way that makes little or no sense.

Just saying. I mean, they scrapped a "flawed" version of this year's inevitably most popular game and put it in the hands of a historically crap developer. Tell me how that makes the slightest bit of sense business-wise. Tell me how one of the biggest game publishers in the world goofed THAT HARD with such an easy concept.

Call me "paranoid", "fanboy", whatever. Corporations have done worse than get developers to make bad decisions with software regarding their competitors....especially certain corporations that started with a dream of monopolizing the computer industry and more or less achieved that goal.

[MetalProxy]

Your not paranoid. MS has been known to do that very thing. I am curtain there is alot of shady stuff going on out there.

[SilentNegotiator]

I know I'm not really paranoid.

But there will always be fanatics to call others "paranoid" when they suggest that corporations are doing shady things. Kind of like a child with a lead-painted toy arguing with you that the corporation that made it is on the straight and narrow.

[rpd123]

Not that paranoid. There was that one time that Bungie was developing Halo exclusively for Mac, and then Microsoft bought Bungie and took Halo. One of MS's greatest franchises, stolen out from under Apple.

[Sheikh Yerbouti]

@rpd

That's actually fair in business. What he's talking about is undermining a customer because he is in competition with another customer who pads your pockets. That's illegal or the very least very unethical.

I think there's a rational reason behind it...albeit disappointing none-the-less.

[rpd123]

@ Sheikh

Oh, yeah I know it's fair business. It's still a dick move, though. (I'm glad they did it though, Halo under Apple was a real time strategy game). I was just saying, it's not that big a leap from buying a competitors game out from under them and making a game bomb on a competitors device on purpose. Not sure if MS paying Activision to make crappy Vita game is illegal, but it is definitely an unethical thing to do.

[Sheikh Yerbouti]

@rpd

I was thinking lemon laws or selling watered down gasoline. Same thing to me...watered down game.

It's a be a dick or get dicked world.

[Knight_Crawler]

@Silent - You must be about 17 years old.

Where were you when Sony personally killed the Dream Cast by keeping all the 3rd party developers on the PS2 and yes belive or not Sony paid those 3 party developers good money to keep certain games on the PS2 only - what MS is doing now is what Sony did in the PS2 era to the Dream Cast and Xbox 1.

A companies number one goal is to make a profit, you may think that your favorite console brand loves you but the truth is that they love your money.

Yes MS might be doing shady things but do not think that the other two are saints.

If MS had giving up after the first Xbox then I think Sony would still be acting arrogant and telling people to get two jobs to buy a PS3 and Next gen dos not start until we say so.

[mcstorm]

@Knight_Crawler You are spot on there but this is still done by sony now. Look at EA some of there games Like Assassins creed have exclusive DLC on them.

Its just business and to give customers a reason to own there console.

[Lvl_up_gamer]

Oh no it's all a giant corporate conspiracy!!!

MS are not paying 3rd party developers to deliberately gimp the competitors version of a game.

Have you ever heard of "Occam's razor"?

It is a principle stating that among competing hypotheses, the one that makes the fewest assumptions should be selected.

Why would a well known and respected developer put their reputation at risk and deliberately gimp a AAA title that cost millions of $$$ and time to develop so that the other platform would have an edge with performance? Money? Bethesda made more money on sales with the PS3 version then what MS would have paid. Assuming MS would have paid, it would have been much more beneficial and value to MS to have the money go towards exclusive content, NOT gimping the competitors version of the game which would still sell anyways.

No, the real reason is simple. The PS3 is extremely hard to program for and the split RAM makes it difficult to create such large open living worlds. It's no different then the 360 version not looking as good or not performing as well as the PC.

MS paid R* $50 million for timed exclusive content. You are out of your mind if you don't think MS got their money back ten fold from consumers who would have originally bought the GTA IV on the PS3 but instead bought it on the 360? Or how many 360's were sold so that consumers would be able to play the timed exclusive content? The deal worked out for both parties. R* got an additional $50 million in their pocket and MS sold consoles which helped establish a larger console dominance in the market.

So bottom line....Yes SilentNegotiator, you ARE Paranoid.

[cee773]

@knight_crawler

No Dreamcast dug its own grave with its inferior CD drive = lack of space compared to DVD not to mention it lacked quite a few buttons on the controller including a right analog,L3,R3 and left and right bumpers on the controller how could devs port games to a console that lacks input that and disc space not to mention it was so easy to pirate a DC game you could burn on a blank CD lol

[SilentNegotiator]

@Knight

I never said that it was exclusively a MS move. In fact, I made a point that it isn't unusual for corporations to do things like that.

And you must be 10, because there is MAJOR difference between buying developers and bribing developers to make crap software for other systems. Paying developers to do things exclusively for you is 110% fair game. Wink, wink, nudge nudging companies into making shoddy versions of software for other systems is illegal in most parts of the developed world.

Dreamcast killed itself, btw. SEGA didn't have any right trying to have a console at that point with how poorly they had managed themselves for years. Plus, they made MISERABLE design decisions - CD? One control stick? What an outdated system it was for its time. You would have to have a fishbowl for a head to think that Dreamcast had any chance of bringing SEGA above their mediocre position.

[Lionalliance]

I really don't understand how Activision works anymore.

[Sarcasm]

$$$ > Anything else.

[majiebeast]

When cod and wow do fall activision is done for hope that happens soon. Disgusting company that shows everything wrong with the gaming industry today minimal effort for max profit.

[torchic]

I agree. Activision represents everything that's wrong with the gaming industry right now, especially with this generation of consoles. this has been the worst generation because publishers don't see us as customers, like I read above they just see us as money bags. I pray we get better next gen.

[Panthers]

While I do agree that Activision is bad, I put none of that on Blizzard. I still love their games, especially Starcraft. While they have become a large company, they still seem very passionate about games. I feel their merge with Activision was out of necessity of Blizzard becoming too big too fast and not knowing how to handle it.

[ozzywazzy]

I heavily disagree. WoW has been stale for about 5 years and milked beyond belief. Diablo 3 was a catastrophe of a game with an elaborate and convenient real money auction house. Blizzard has become indefensible and has clearly adopted activisions practices.

[Cam977]

This absolutely horrendous news. I really wish we'd got this and not Nohilistic's "best effort".

[MasterCornholio]

So they took what could have been a decent game for the Vita and replaced it with a game made by one of the worst devs in history (Nihilistic Software).

Wow Kotick just wow.

[SamPao]

I have to agree... still have to see a GREAT game from this developer. everything is rushed or just bad

[tehpees3]

They would have definitely made a better version. Activision clearly didn't care about this.

[FarCryLover182]

I remember some other team at Acti a few years ago had a WW2 CoD game with squad commands. Would have been good too probably. BUT NO "theres no audience". I shake my fist at you Activision.

[Rivitur]

Why that sounds like a brothers in arms rip-off...

[Heavenly King]

as crappy many sites report Declassified to be, it is selling quite good. Which makes you think about the lost opportunity for Activision to expand the COD franchise into more platforms.

[isyourhouseonfire]

They were probably too expensive to employ. For the number of people that will buy Call of Duty on the Vita, it just wasn't worth it. Activision needs to make these calls based on business, not personal feelings, and that's exactly what they did.

[a_bro]

Theres no such thing as "Too Expensive" for Activision...Especially when they sell about 20 million copies of COD per Year.

[Sarcasm]

If Activision actually made this a good game, think of the potential real sales it could have been for them. If they had a studio that developed at 60fps, full fledged COD experience on the Vita, it could have elevated the Vita into space!

[SAE]

i think the reason to move it is to release it with black ops 2 ...

[bobshi]

Sony should have lent them a 1st party studio to make sure either BO2 Vita turned out to be a decent port, or at least help with Declassified given they only had 4 months dev time.

It is meant to be a console selling game, but it is anything but.

[mafiahajeri]

Killzone is the only Vita FPS worth mentioning.

[WeskerChildReborned]

Wow well this sucks, instead we got what is Declassified, possibly first COD on a portable and the worse COD in the series, hopefully their will be a decent cod game coming out for PS Vita.

[Lethalsuperhuman]

WTFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF!!!!!!!!! !! AND THEY WANNA TELL US NOW!!!! The question I want answered is "How bad was it?" and "Was it better than Declassified?" If it was worser than declassified then i will understand. The thing that really bothers me is if the flawed one have at most 12 vs. 12 in MP and in game chat. That was the dumbest move i ever seen and why TF will you give it Nihillistic. IDGAF anymore. Hopefully, they dont switch Killzone Mercernary to Killzone Unknown.

Will the next Call of Duty on the Ps vita be a port?

[SaffronCurse]

I hope so, since Nihilistic is done with Retail games.

[3GenGames]

Shame they took a studio that had a chance to do something different and gave it to their guys who had been writing this same game for the last 5 years? Way to take the project away from people that probably would have really cared about bringing the best product/game to the table.

#ActivionGenius

[InTheLab]

Vicarious Visions should make another Spider-Man and Beenox should do something else.

Actually, Treyarch should make another Spider-man and lay off the CoD for a few years.

[DJ]

Why not just release Black Ops 2 on Vita 6 months after with "bonus content" or something? Activision really screwed up.

[BlackWolf]

HAHHAHHAHHAHHAHHAAHHA