Pivotal to close or be sold, say rumours

Rumours flying amongst senior industry execs are suggesting that SCi is planning to close or sell off its UK studio Pivotal.

The reports come ahead of SCi’s plans to reveal the findings of its business review tomorrow. The review was initiated in January 2008 by newly-installed CEO Phil Rogers. Rogers took over as chief of the company after former CEO Jane Cavanagah stepped down following a protracted period where SCi was in take-over talks, losing shareholder confidence.

Since then he’s been evaluating the SCi business, which includes its Eidos publishing label and games studios Crystal Dynamics, Io Interactive, Beautiful Game Studios, Eidos Studios Hungary, Eidos Studios Sweden, Pivotal Games and Eidos Montreal.

Now some are claiming ahead of the official publication of the review that the result will suggest the firm focus on its core strengths and creative teams – namely established franchises such as Tomb Raider and Hitman put together by Crystal Dynamics and Io – while dispensing of Pivotal, and possibly other ‘non-core’ development teams’ (although other studios were not named by our sources).

Pivotal’s Conflict Denied Ops was released just weeks ago.

The claims, however, have not yet been verified by SCi, unavailable for comment at the time of writing – the announcement of the business review results tomorrow morning should clear the matter up.