Buzz! Brain Of The UK • Eurogamer.net

All employees let go today.

UK indie studio Relentless Software - best-known for its Buzz! series of quiz games on PlayStation 2 - has closed its doors for the final time.

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Buzz! inventor Relentless Software is making three-and-a-half new games, co-founder Andrew Eades told me this afternoon - including a new game in the successful Blue Toad murder mystery series.

Buzz PS3: What went wrong

Relentless tells its side of the story.

For Relentless Software, the book has all but closed on Buzz! - a quiz series voiced by Jason Donovan and recognised by its bespoke four-button controllers. What Sony poured champagne over during the glory days of PS2 simply failed to bubble on PS3.

Buzz! Brain of the UK

Buzz off.

Buzz! did well for Sony during the PS2 era, the family quiz game selling bucket-loads and holding strong positions week after week in the UK charts. Moving on to PS3, Sony needed developer Relentless to harness the new generation's potential - wireless, online, pure grunt - quickly and effectively to push the console into the arms of an audience out of Microsoft's reach.

Buzz! Quiz TV, released in the middle of last year, was up for the challenge, and planted a seed ready to be nourished by Sony and the community until it grew into a fabulous online quiz flowerbed. Bouquet. Whatever. But despite a spattering of DLC packs and a Special Edition release last Christmas, the buds never opened.

So along comes Buzz! Brain of the UK - the relaunch on home turf, perhaps. Inside are 4000 questions about our funny-shaped island, where people drink tea, don't talk about sex, drink beer, don't talk to each other, drink gin, and apologise excessively. Questions all fall into existing categories. Where is this? That's Bath. Who drinks in the Nag's Head? Rodney Trotter. Press the buzzer when you see the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Where would you find someone wearing a sporran? Something about Wales. Something about Emmerdale. The Royal Pavilion in Brighton (represent). And so on.