Changes at the top of Brash; Jumper sold 16,000 units
Exclusively in Daily Variety tomorrow... and online now for your reading pleasure: Just a year after
launch, there's a shakeup at Brash Entertainment.
The Hollywood-based publisher that's using $400 million in private equity money to exclusively do games based on movie, TV and music licenses has lost its president Nicholas Longano (pictured right). A Brash rep confirmed that he has "exited" the company after I heard the news from several sources.
He wasn't officially fired, as far as I know, but it seems safe to assume you don't voluntarily leave a company you co-founded one year after it launched if everything's going swimmingly.
Longano, as most of you probably know, ran game advertising company Massive with partner Mitch Davis until they sold it to Microsoft. Davis remains in his post as CEO and is taking over the president responsibilities from Davis as well.
The two of them founded Brash with Legendary Pictures head Thomas Tull, who tapped a lot of the same funding sources he got for Legendary to invest in Brash, and Atlanta businessman and Massive investor Bert Ellis.
Longano is still an investor, so he'll remain involved to the extent that his money talks.
Brash has certainly had problems in its first year in terms of gamers' perception. It's first two games,
"Alvin and the Chipmunks" and "Jumper: Griffin's Story," were both developed on very short cycles in order to meet a movie release date and were critically bashed. People inside Brash admit that they didn't exactly put their best foot forward with those games.
But in the process of reporting this story I thought it would be interesting to find out how they did commercially, even if gamers didn't give 'em any respect. It turns out "Alvin" did OK, selling 281,000 units in the U.S. according to NPD. But "Jumper?" It has sold an astonishingly low 16,000 units since February. That's gotta hurt.
On Variety.com:
-Brash President Longano Exits
-"Jumper: Griffin's Story" review
-"Alvin and the Chipmunks" review
-Brash Entertainment launch story
Chris Morris reports on the business and culture of video games and offers analysis of recent events and industry trends.
Subscribe to this blog's feed
16,000 units for Jumper ! :D Maybe this will make developpers think twice before releasing crappy movie tie-ins. I love that !
Received the GTA shirt, btw, thank you - I'm now a star for the neighbourhood kids (so young that they shouldn't play the game in the first place).
Posted by: Holden | May 24, 2008 at 05:11 AM