Neversoft

Ted Nugent in Guitar Hero 4

Not much is known about Guitar Hero 4, which is slated for release sometime later this year. But some new information has popped up, courtesy of none other than legendary guitarist Ted Nugent. In an interview on the Detroit Radio Station WRIF he mentioned that he is involved in the production of the fourth game in the series, using colorful language to express the motion capture work he did. While he did not mention his level of participation in the game, he did mention one song specifically

More...

A Guitar Hero / Rock Band lesson + drums talk

YM Excerpt: Once upon a time red octane and harmonix were happy friendly people, red octane said hey lets make a guitar game from this copied peripheral we got from guitar freaks and harmonix said…. OMFG ROCK ON MOTHERFUCKER so guitar hero was born activision said OMFG WE WANT MONEY ERRR THROW UP THE HORNS BICTH so activision bought red octane and guitar hero 2 came out then mtv said DUDE WE INVENTED ROCK so mtv bought harmonix, which is basically the actual creative rock influence to

More...

Big Air Gaming League ladders reset! Win a trip to the 2009 Honda Session in Vail, Colorado!

Big Air Gaming League ladders reset! Win a trip to the 2009 Honda Session in Vail, Colorado! Filed under: Activision, BAGL, Big Air Gaming League, Colorado, GGL, Guitar Hero III, Honda Session, Neversoft, rhythm game, Tournament, Vail, xbox 360 GGL and GameStop have restarted the Big Air Gaming League Guitar Hero III Xbox 360 1v1 tournament as of today, May 16! The ladder runs until June 22 and the top 32 players from the ladder will advance to a bracket phase.  The bracket starts June 25

More...

April Software NPDs: GTA and Mario Kart Equal Cash

As it turns out, GameStop’s claim that 64% of all copies of GTA IV sold were on Xbox 360 was spot on — 64.9% is the exact number if you do the math with NPD’s numbers for the month of April. Between the 360 and PS3 versions of the game, GTA IV managed to sell 2.85 million even though it was released on April 29 — not too shabby. Mario Kart Wii, meanwhile, sold more than a million copies. That’s a million plastic wheels out there in the wild, imparing people’s ability to control the game prop

More...

No estúdio de gravação, Guitar Hero prepara a volta ao topo das paradas

O boato de que o próximo Guitar Hero incluiria microfone e bateria já circula na Internet há algum tempo. Embora o próximo lançamento da série, GH:Aerosmith ainda seja exclusivo para os adeptos da guitarra, a Activision e a Neversoft confirmaram essa semana que GH IV vai ter sim, mais instrumentos. Além da guitarra e dos óbvios microfone e bateria — todos sem fio dessa vez — o jogo vai contar com uma ferramenta de personalização dos integrantes da banda. Então vai ser igual a Rock Band? Até

More...

Neversoft Entertainment
Type	Subsidiary
Founded	1994
Headquarters	Woodland Hills, California
Key people	Joel Jewett
Industry	Computer and video games
Products	Tony Hawk's series Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock
Owner	Activision Blizzard
Parent	Activision
Website	Neversoft Homepage

Neversoft or Neversoft Entertainment is a American video game developer, founded in 1994 by Joel Jewett, Mick West and Chris Ward. Neversoft is best recognized for their line of Tony Hawk skateboarding games, known as the Tony Hawk's series. The company was acquired by Activision in 1999.

Early history

Neversoft was founded in 1994 by three employees of Malibu Interactive, (previously Acme Interactive) a division of Malibu Comics based in Westlake Village, California. At that time the primary platforms were the 16-bit consoles, the Mega Drive/Genesis and the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Games for these systems could be developed by very small teams, anywhere from two to ten developers. As a result it was much easier than at present to set up a game development company, and several groups of people had already left Malibu to strike out on their own. Left Field Productions and Paradox Development being two extant companies that were founded in such a way, with others such as Clockwork Tortoise no longer in existence.

Joel Jewett, a native of Montana and a CPA, was at the time head of development at the rapidly shrinking Malibu Interactive. He teamed up with Mick West, a game programmer who had just completed working on "Battletech - A Game of Armored Combat" for the Mega Drive/Genesis, and Chris Ward, an Artist. Both Chris and Mick were from Yorkshire in England, although they first met when they moved to California in 1993 to work at Malibu Interactive.

In July 1994 Neversoft was formed. They initially found work for Playmates Interactive Entertainment a then division of Playmates Toys, who were about to release a line of toys called Skeleton Warriors and wanted a game to go along with the toys and the cartoon series. Neversoft began work on the game design, and moved into offices in Woodland Hills, California.

Neversoft worked on the Sega version for five months, over that time they hired another artist and a level designer. In December 1994 Playmates cancelled the game. They were not unhappy with the progress, but had decided that they needed to get on the 32-Bit bandwagon and develop the game for the new Sega Saturn.

1995 was spent developing Skeleton Warriors for the Sega Saturn. Over the course of this year Neversoft grew rapidly, hiring three programmers, five artists, a level designer, a tester and an office administrator. Skeleton Warriors was finished in time for the 1995 holiday season, and Neversoft began looking for other work while they ported Skeleton Warriors to the Sony PlayStation.

In 1996 Neversoft continued to expand, swelling to over twenty employees. They worked for six months on a game based on Ghost Rider for Crystal Dynamics which was cancelled due to financial problems with the publisher. They got connected to the internet (previously all communications were done with phone and fax). With some excess capacity Neversoft started to develop a game of their own design, initially called Big Guns. The technology developed there was used in their next project, a conversion of the PC game MDK. Toward the end of 1996 Neversoft sold the idea for Big Guns to Sony Computer Entertainment and they began development.

1997 was a tumultuous year for Neversoft. The MDK conversion took far longer than expected, and the Big Guns game (renamed Exodus) went through numerous design changes at the behest of Sony, and was eventually cancelled in November 1997. The company shrunk back to just twelve employees. Neversoft then spent the next few months shopping around their technology, meeting with numerous companies and looking for work.

In January 1998, just as Neversoft was about to run out of money, they had a fortunate meeting with Activision who were looking for someone to re-develop Apocalypse, a failed internal project featuring the voice of Bruce Willis. The technology developed for Big Guns turned out to be ideal for the project, Activision were impressed and Neversoft began work on Apocalypse.

In May 1998, Apocalypse was going very well, and Activision signed up Neversoft to develop a prototype for a skateboarding game. This proceeded slowly as they could not spare many people from Apocalypse. The initial prototypes resembled the arcade game Top Skater. Apocalypse wrapped up in October of 1998 and development began in earnest on Tony Hawk's Pro Skater (aka THPS) for the PlayStation and N64. At this time Neversoft comprised 15 people: six programmers, five artists, three level designers and Joel, the President.

Ongoing success

1999 saw the development of the first Tony Hawk's Pro Skater game, the start of a series of wildly successful games that have defined the extreme sports genre ever since. The original game was released on the PlayStation in October 1999, and development immediately began on the sequel.

1999 saw the start of development of the game Spider-Man, also for Activision. Like THPS the technology for this game was also based on the Apocalypse engine, which was in turn based on the Big Guns engine. Neversoft was now developing two major games in parallel, and expanded appropriately, growing into two large teams.

Activision acquired Neversoft in the summer of 1999 in a stock swap deal. The founders of Neversoft and several key employees signed four year employment agreements.

The year 2000 saw the development of THPS2, and also the release of Spider-Man. During 2000 Neversoft began work on Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 specifically for the PlayStation 2. As both teams finished their project they were merged into one large team. THPS3 was developed using the RenderWare game engine.

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 was released in 2001, followed by Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 in 2002. In 2003 Neversoft reworked the game with a more story-oriented approach in Tony Hawk's Underground, followed by a sequel in Tony Hawk's Underground 2 in 2004. In 2004 Neversoft again split into two teams as they began work on a new internally developed IP called GUN and the seventh version of the Tony Hawk's series called Tony Hawk's American Wasteland.

Tony Hawk's Project 8 was developed and released in 2006. This was the first title under Neversoft that was truly developed as a next-gen title for the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3.

Tony Hawk's Proving Ground was released in 2007. It is the second next-gen title in the Tony Hawk's series with newer features.

After Activision acquired RedOctane and the Guitar Hero series, Harmonix developed their last Guitar Hero game, Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s, before they were acquired by MTV. Neversoft continued the Guitar Hero series by developing the next installment, Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, with their in-house game engine made from scratch rather than using Harmonix's engine. Released in 2007, Neversoft developed the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 versions.

Current projects

It is currently unknown what Neversoft is developing because there are no announcements from Activision. However, they are currently working on downloadable content for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 release of Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock. Recent reports hint that expansions for game consoles would happen.

The company's namesake will also be used as the title of the lead villain for Austin Powers 4, speculated to be video game fan Scott Evil's new identity.

Video games

References

External links

• Neversoft website
• Activision website