Beenox Inc. is a Canadian video game developer established in 2000 in

Quebec City Quebec City ( or ; french: Ville de Québec), officially Québec (), is the capital city of the Canadian province of Quebec. As of July 2021, the city had a population of 549,459, and the metropolitan area had a population of 839,311. It is t ...

Quebec Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...

, Canada. The studio became a wholly owned subsidiary of

Activision Activision Publishing, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in Santa Monica, California. It serves as the publishing business for its parent company, Activision Blizzard, and consists of several subsidiary studios. Activision is one ...

on May 25, 2005.

History

Between 2003 and 2006, the developer was essentially a

porting In software engineering, porting is the process of adapting software for the purpose of achieving some form of execution in a computing environment that is different from the one that a given program (meant for such execution) was originally desi ...

house. They completed approximately 30 projects for Microsoft Windows and Macintosh operating systems, based on popular franchises such as

X-Men The X-Men are a superhero team appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics, first appearing in ''The X-Men'' #1 by artist/co-plotter Jack Kirby and writer/editor Stan Lee in 1963. Although initially cancelled in 1970 due to lo ...

, Spider-Man and

Shrek ''Shrek'' is a 2001 American computer-animated comedy film loosely based on the 1990 book of the same name by William Steig. It is the first installment in the ''Shrek'' franchise. The film was directed by Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jen ...

. In 2006, they returned to original game development with the console versions of ''

Bee Movie Game ''Bee Movie Game'' is a video game based on the DreamWorks-animated movie ''Bee Movie''. The game was released on October 30, 2007. Beenox developed the Xbox 360, PlayStation 2, and Microsoft Windows versions of the game, Smart Bomb Interact ...

'', inspired by the

feature film A feature film or feature-length film is a narrative film (motion picture or "movie") with a running time long enough to be considered the principal or sole presentation in a commercial entertainment program. The term ''feature film'' originall ...

from DreamWorks Animation. As part of Activision's E3 2007 media blitz, it was announced that Beenox was the developer behind the Windows version of Activision's Spider-Man game '' Spider-Man: Friend or Foe'', which was released in October 2007. They released the Xbox 360, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Wii and Windows versions of '' Monsters vs. Aliens'' and the console versions of ''

Guitar Hero Smash Hits ''Guitar Hero Smash Hits'' (titled ''Guitar Hero Greatest Hits'' in Europe and Australia) is a music rhythm game and the fourth expansion game to the ''Guitar Hero'' series. The game features 48 songs originally featured in five previous game ...

''. Beenox later developed the Spider-Man games '' Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions'', '' Spider-Man: Edge of Time'', ''

The Amazing Spider-Man ''The Amazing Spider-Man'' is an ongoing American comic book series featuring the Marvel Comics superhero Spider-Man as its main protagonist. Being in the mainstream continuity of the franchise, it began publication in 1963 as a bimonthly per ...

'' and ''

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 ''The Amazing Spider-Man 2'' (internationally titled ''The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Rise of Electro'') is a 2014 American superhero film based on the Marvel Comics character Spider-Man. The film was directed by Marc Webb and produced by Avi A ...

''. After founder Dominique Brown's departure in December 2012, the studio's focus shifted from leading original game development to doing a number of support tasks on

's superbrands ''

Skylanders ''Skylanders'' is a toys-to-life action-adventure video game series published by Activision. ''Skylanders'' games are played by placing character figures called the Skylanders on the "Portal of Power", a device that reads the figures' tags throu ...

'' and '' Call of Duty''. In 2015, Beenox worked in conjunction with Mercenary Technology on bringing '' Call of Duty: Black Ops III'' to

PlayStation 3 The PlayStation 3 (PS3) is a home video game console developed by Sony Computer Entertainment. The successor to the PlayStation 2, it is part of the PlayStation brand of consoles. It was first released on November 11, 2006, in Japan, November ...

and

Xbox 360 The Xbox 360 is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. As the successor to the original Xbox, it is the second console in the Xbox series. It competed with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generati ...

. In March 2022, Beenox announced that it would open a second office in

Montréal, Quebec Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-most populous city in Canada and List of towns in Quebec, most populous city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian ...

, increasing its staff count by 20%. Polloni will lead the new studio.

Games developed

Ports

References

External links

* * * * {{Activision Activision Companies based in Quebec City Canadian companies established in 2000 Video game companies established in 2000 Video game companies of Canada Video game development companies 2000 establishments in Quebec 2005 mergers and acquisitions Canadian subsidiaries of foreign companies