Ah the videogame industry. So many broken dreams, so many people without job; and yes another year and more studios that closed their doors, so let's see the body count:

Propaganda Games (January 2011): Sometimes is not the lack of talent but the lack of good material what kills a studio, formed with some ex-workers from EA, Propaganda had two disappointing releases (Turok and Tron) and left a really cool concept incomplete and canned (Pirates of the Caribbean: Armada of the Damned) Still you can watch the trailer for a game that'll never be released.

Bizarre Creations (February 2011): One of the oldest studios closed their doors for one big game, back in 2009 Activision put a lot of money on a new project called Blur, it was expected "to do for racing games what Call of Duty do for shooters", unfortunally that didn't happen, and the game had a quick life in the shelves and a long dead in the bargain bin. Most of the talent decided to create other studios (Lucid games and Hogrocket) but to this day the furture of beloved franchises like Geometry wars and Project Gotham racing is still unknown.

You can get this game for $5

Kaos Studios (June 2011): What happens when your game sells 2.6 millions of copies? You have to close of course, apparently THQ put a lot of faith and money on this new franchise called Homefront wich unfortunaly was cramped in a saturated market with better games, sadly for the studio THQ saw no value on them and decided to handle the next Homefront game to Crytek.

On the bright side they "almost" predicted Kim Jong Il dead

Game Republic (June 2011): 5 years ago this was one of the most promising studios of the "next generation", sadly their first games for the ps3 (Genji: Days of Blade and Folklore) didn't fulfill the sales expectations about them. Their next projects like Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom and Dragon Ball origins were equally unsuccessful, their last game Knights Contract was a rushed mess that was shipped in a incomplete state.

If you own a PS3 you MUST have this game in your collection

Black Rock Studios (June 2011): Much similar to Bizarre's fate, the studio was know for quality racing games, unfortunally this generation has been quite harsh with that genre and after the bad sales of Split/Second Disney decided to cut the support for the studio and finally to close down the entire thing after a huge reduction of workforce.

Look it has cars and explosions... What more can you ask for?

The big THQ massacre (August 2011): THQ had a really bad year, so bad that they had to close almost 50% of their studios, so in one month they shut down Studio Phoenix (MX vs. ATV Alive), Studio Warrington (Red Faction Battlegrounds), Studio Australia (Avatar) and Blue Tongue (de Blob), BTW THQ total value was 49.1 millions last week. So the entire company value is almost the budged of one AAA game from Activision.

One of the most unique games of the entire generation

Visceral games Melbourne (September 2011): Visceral has studios in US, Canada and China, they had another one in Melbourne that was closed this year because they  failed to see profits in the studio's future, the good news is that some of he studio developers went on to work for EA, the sad news is that the rumored Jack the Ripper game is canned.

It was a tough year for the Australian game industry.

Team Bondi (October 2011): If somebody wants to know how NOT to manage a company, Team Bondi is a good example. The company only had 1 game complete in almost 8 years of existence, mostly because of bad working conditions, terrible relationships with publishers (Sony and Rockstar) plus having a douche for manager, there're dozens of articles on the Internet about this. Is L.A. Noire so good that'll be remembered forever as a masterpiece in the gaiming industry? Sadly no.

They spent years doing those wrinkles

Codemasters Studios Guildford (September 2011): Basically Codemasters wanted a piece of the saturated market of FPS and decided to create their very own version of "Call of Duty", the result was a disaster know as Bodycount, a complete generic uninspired game that nobody wanted and apparently nobody bought.

How many times we have seen this?

outside of Game Republic, cant really say I feel any of these studios, specifically Team Bondi... They checked out of reality big time.

I swear I've seen that last pic maybe once...

I looked over this list again... I just dont get it. How did somebody think Bodycount was a good idea? why did somebody greenlight this?

Sucks to see GameRepublic go. I enjoyed Folklore.

And I thought Homefront did well... Must have been some crazy expectations on that game.

thats the new reality of games,they cost alot....

I really felt sorry for Bizarre

Bizarre is the only one that didn't deserve it they made one bad game which had okay sales and ended up in the ground.

Game Republic as much as I liked their gems (folklore and Majin), they did make more bad then good and their last game was a piece of crap. There really was talent there I can't help but think if they had someone to hit them on the head and say NO a few times they'd be making more good games.

this only goes to show you how big of an investment making games is these days. It also helps you understand why game studios like to play it safe all the time,because one bad investment could be a real disaster,from which there is no recovery.

Budget games can be just as good or even far better then big budget games in all areas but presentation. Frankly I think it would be more prudent for companies to make some unique budget games rather then pouring hundreds of millions into the current fad. I mean half those games played it safe concept and gameplay wise and ended the studios.