Activision's 2005 release schedule @ Gaming Target

Written by John Scalzo on May 05, 2005

News: The number two third party publisher publishes their outlook for 2005.

Activision has released financial information for their last fiscal year and revealed part of their release schedule for 2005. Financials for the company put their fiscal year 2005 (April 1, 2004 - March 31, 2005) sales at $1.4 billion dollars, about half of market leader EA's $3 billion.

The key quote is from Activision's CEO Robert Kotick: "We entered fiscal 2006 with the largest installed base of video gaming platforms in the industry's history and, we believe, our strongest product release slate ever. Our lineup includes new versions of our top-selling franchises -- Tony Hawk, Spider-Man, Shrek, Call of Duty, Doom, X-Men, True Crime and Quake -- as well as, Fantastic Four, Madagascar, The Movies and an original property from the development team behind the Tony Hawk series. We have more depth in our portfolio of franchises, and with over 1,000 talented team members in our internal studios, we have one of the strongest product development operations in the industry. We remain enthusiastic about our long-term prospects and our operating margin expansion programs should enable us to continue delivering long-term value to our shareholders."

Some of the titles that Kotick was talking about have already been announced and they are:

Madagascar (PS2, Xbox, GC, GBA, DS, PC)
Tony Hawk's Underground 3 (PS2, Xbox, GC)
Ultimate Spider-Man (PS2, Xbox, GC)
Call of Duty: Big Red One (PS2, Xbox, GC)
Call of Duty 2 (PC)
Quake IV (PC)
X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse (PS2, Xbox, GC)
True Crime 2 (PS2, Xbox, maybe GC)
Fantastic Four (PS2, Xbox, GC, GBA)
The Movies (PS2, Xbox, GC, PC)
The Untitled Neversoft Project
The Untitled Shrek Project

The question mark in Kotick's speech is Doom. He's likely talking about Doom 3, which was released at the beginning of Activision's fiscal year on April 4. But maybe something else is in the planning stages.

Activision has also previously said that they would support all next-generation systems from their launch. This of course was referring to the Xbox Next, which is still a big mystery as to when it will come out (wink wink). Rumors (an alleged EB Games sellsheet) pointed to Activision releasing three games for the Xbox Next launch: Tony Hawk's Underground 3, Call of Duty 2 and Quake IV. Other rumors from GameSpot put the Untitled Neversoft Project on the Xbox Next because of the lack of information (or even a title) released for it. Further rumors (a WalMart.com listing) point to a PSP version of X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse. None of this has been confirmed nor denied of course.

We'll keep you posted on all of these titles as Activision slowly reveals more (or any details) on them.