View Full Version : Links and Amped dev sold to Take Two
http://www.gamespot.com/news/2004/12/16/news_6115224.html
MS only has Top Spin. Well, what do you have to say now Qroach?
MightyHedgehog
17-Dec-2004, 03:10
Only the Amped and Links teams changed hands. PAM, a french outift, does Top Spin. Obviously, the franchises are still in MS' ownership. I wouldn't be surprised to see them done by other, outside developers for MS next-gen.
why would I have anything to say about this? :?: other than it's not a big deal?
Inane_Dork
17-Dec-2004, 04:38
The Unseen
Tork
Psychonauts
TFLO
Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath
Unreal Championship 2
NFL Fever
NBA Inside Drive
NHL Rivals
High Heat Baseball (they purchased the IP from 3DO)
Links
Top Spin
Amped
Great MS. Just freaking great. Who the heck wants to work for you now?
whatever... I see what you're trying to do, but I just don't care... every publisher starts and cancels tons of project you probably never heard of.
Only the Amped and Links teams changed hands. PAM, a french outift, does Top Spin. Obviously, the franchises are still in MS' ownership. I wouldn't be surprised to see them done by other, outside developers for MS next-gen.
Nope, T2 bought the Links, Topspin and Amped IPs too. PAM developed Topspin but Idie produced the game. All 3 brands will be going multiplatform too.
T2's looking to really take over sports, they'll probably fully aquire Visual Conepts in the next 2 years as well. Now all they really need is a good Soccer game.
Great MS. Just freaking great. Who the heck wants to work for you now?
Microsoft is setting their goals bigger as a publisher. No more mid range products and they've phased out sports entirely... now they'll focus on marquee games like Halo or Rare software.
Inane_Dork
17-Dec-2004, 20:06
whatever... I see what you're trying to do, but I just don't care... every publisher starts and cancels tons of project you probably never heard of.Well then, I guess my complaint is that MS should not make every project axing they have public. Goodness knows how every other publisher manages to axe drastically fewer titles. Must be magic or something.
Microsoft is setting their goals bigger as a publisher. No more mid range products and they've phased out sports entirely... now they'll focus on marquee games like Halo or Rare software.Yep. Again, who wants to work for them now? MS is basically saying that if you don't have a blockbuster game, forget it. And how many developers can promise that? Not even UC2 met that criteria.
Well then, I guess my complaint is that MS should not make every project axing they have public. Goodness knows how every other publisher manages to axe drastically fewer titles. Must be magic or something.
They don't. Internal projects get canned all the time without us hearing about them. This was a sale between two publically traded companies. "You" try and keep that secret...
Johnny Awesome
17-Dec-2004, 21:05
This paves the way for EA Sports Xbox 2 exclusivity. Madden 2006... only on Xbox 2. Could be...
Inane_Dork
17-Dec-2004, 22:54
They don't. Internal projects get canned all the time without us hearing about them. This was a sale between two publically traded companies. "You" try and keep that secret...DUH. I realize the news had to break. Don't be stupid.
My point, which is really obvious, is that MS has more broken projects left in its wake than any publisher I know of. That's bad news.
They don't. Internal projects get canned all the time without us hearing about them. This was a sale between two publically traded companies. "You" try and keep that secret...DUH. I realize the news had to break. Don't be stupid.
My point, which is really obvious, is that MS has more broken projects left in its wake than any publisher I know of. That's bad news.
I'm not so sure it is bad news. As a first-party game developer they are still the youngest of the 3 with 3 years(just counting the time Xbox has been available). Microsoft brought a lot of developers in house to design titles for a broad spectrum of game genres because they had no idea how much third-party support they would receive. Would you not jump at the chance to focus most of your developers on higher quality titles? With that said I can understand why MS decided to shed some of their developers to work toward that.
Tommy McClain
My point, which is really obvious, is that MS has more broken projects left in its wake than any publisher I know of.
Umm, that certainly is not a fact. Like I said twice already, you simply don't hear of every cancelled project from publishers. You have even heard of all the cancelled projects from MS for xbox. I know of a few that were never annouced. In fact I've heard of tons of projects form other publihers over the years that were never annouced and/or cancelled.
Looks like MS is going to stop all sports game development. So much for halting all Xbox1 sports game development so that it can focus on Xbox2 sports games.
MS has dropped all sports development altogether. They dropped all the xbox 2 sports titles already.
MightyHedgehog
18-Dec-2004, 07:01
Only the Amped and Links teams changed hands. PAM, a french outift, does Top Spin. Obviously, the franchises are still in MS' ownership. I wouldn't be surprised to see them done by other, outside developers for MS next-gen.
Nope, T2 bought the Links, Topspin and Amped IPs too. PAM developed Topspin but Idie produced the game. All 3 brands will be going multiplatform too.
T2's looking to really take over sports, they'll probably fully aquire Visual Conepts in the next 2 years as well. Now all they really need is a good Soccer game.
Really?! What the hell are they thinking?! Crazy...I loved Amped and Links is a legendary franchise...
*sniff*
Inane_Dork
18-Dec-2004, 08:01
I'm not so sure it is bad news. As a first-party game developer they are still the youngest of the 3 with 3 years(just counting the time Xbox has been available). Microsoft brought a lot of developers in house to design titles for a broad spectrum of game genres because they had no idea how much third-party support they would receive. Would you not jump at the chance to focus most of your developers on higher quality titles? With that said I can understand why MS decided to shed some of their developers to work toward that.I did not say it was not understandable, either. I've heard all the rationales. Heck, I've used most all of them myself.
But they just don't work. For instance, why drop UC2 and then pick up Kingdom under Fire? Sales? Quality? Developer importance? I can't think of a good reason. If you can, I'm all ears.
It's exactly like the argument that Nintendo is going down, IMO. The evidence piles up, but it's not damning by any means. You can explain it various ways.
Umm, that certainly is not a fact.It most certainly is too. It's not an objective truth, of course, which is what you'd like to talk about (I would too). Of all the companies I know, MS has, by far, the worst track record for projects that fell apart.
Like I said twice already, you simply don't hear of every cancelled project from publishers. You have even heard of all the cancelled projects from MS for xbox. I know of a few that were never annouced. In fact I've heard of tons of projects form other publihers over the years that were never annouced and/or cancelled.No... really? I don't know all the projects? Surely you jest! :P
Yes, I know that. I would like to know how basically everyone else manages to keep these things on the sly. If there's a reason, I'll hear it. Till then, though, I have no good reason to suspect that the unannounced projects of other companies are greater than those of MGS.
The Unseen
Tork
Psychonauts
TFLO
Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath
Unreal Championship 2
NFL Fever
NBA Inside Drive
NHL Rivals
High Heat Baseball (they purchased the IP from 3DO)
Links
Top Spin
Amped
Great MS. Just freaking great. Who the heck wants to work for you now?
Unreal Championship 2 is cancelled?! And I thought it looked pretty neat...
Well then, I guess my complaint is that MS should not make every project axing they have public. Goodness knows how every other publisher manages to axe drastically fewer titles. Must be magic or something.
Weren't most of those games announced early on in the xbox's lifecycle? At that point microsoft just needed to pad the game lineup for xbox, they didn't know how many good games they would be getting.
Johnny Awesome
18-Dec-2004, 20:01
MS didn't cancel all of those titles. They sold them to other publishers - Tork, Oddworld, Psychonauts, and Unreal Championship 2 still exist, but will be published by other firms. Also, when you consider that EA is bidding for exclusivity in sports, there's no real point in continuing sports game development.
As for why Kingdom Under Fire and Outrun 2? Japanese developer relations. MS doesn't want to lose what little Japanese developer support they have with From Software and Sega. They probably didn't pay much and figured they'd sell 100,000 copies each over the next year or so, mostly at the $20 price point.
As for why Kingdom Under Fire and Outrun 2? Japanese developer relations. MS doesn't want to lose what little Japanese developer support they have with From Software and Sega. They probably didn't pay much and figured they'd sell 100,000 copies each over the next year or so, mostly at the $20 price point.
Kingdom Under Fire = Korean :wink:
Yes, I know that. I would like to know how basically everyone else manages to keep these things on the sly. If there's a reason, I'll hear it. Till then, though, I have no good reason to suspect that the unannounced projects of other companies are greater than those of MGS.
The reason is simple, as Azbat pointed out, Microsoft was new on the market, they had to produce a lot of games, and advertise them very early in their developements, all that in order to, first create hype, buzz around the Xbox and secondly they had to reassure the gamers that the Xbox was going to have a lot of games, of all kind.
Once the Xbox sold enough, and once it had the support of a lot of third party publishers, and once they had a global vision of their market, MGS took some decisions accordingly. One of thoses decisions was to reduce, i must say drastically, the number of their internal projects.
Seeing that they "hyped" some of those projects, because of the previously mentioned reasons, thoses cancelations didn't go unnoticed like it would with any other big developer.
But to be honest, some of the early choices made by MGS, and especially thoses made by Ed Fries, were, let's say, questionable that's true.
On the other hand the choices made by MGS today are perfectly understandable and, more than this, they're good for the whole Xbox business, in my opinion.
BTW, canceling a project and selling a developer house and its IPs is not the same thing. One is indeed a bad move for MGS image(Although, judging by the actual market, almost all developers are in no position to give MS attitude if they propose them to fund a project), the other is just a business transaction between two publishers.
Johnny Awesome
19-Dec-2004, 00:04
As for why Kingdom Under Fire and Outrun 2? Japanese developer relations. MS doesn't want to lose what little Japanese developer support they have with From Software and Sega. They probably didn't pay much and figured they'd sell 100,000 copies each over the next year or so, mostly at the $20 price point.
Kingdom Under Fire = Korean :wink:
Oops. I meant Phantagram and Asian developer relations. :oops:
Microsoft is setting their goals bigger as a publisher. No more mid range products and they've phased out sports entirely... now they'll focus on marquee games like Halo or Rare software.Yep. Again, who wants to work for them now? MS is basically saying that if you don't have a blockbuster game, forget it. And how many developers can promise that? Not even UC2 met that criteria.
Not every game needs to be a blockbuster, that's what Rare, Bioware and Bungie games are for. Microsoft will sorround them with strong secondary releases like Fable, PGR, Crimson Skies, Age of Empires, MechAssault and so on. They want to be more like Nintendo, with holiday blockbusters and solid filler brands.
They want to be more like Nintendo, with holiday blockbusters and solid filler brands.
You mean they want to cannibalize their own market, and therefore alienate any form of third party support? :P
Johnny Awesome
21-Dec-2004, 21:38
No.
You mean they want to cannibalize their own market, and therefore alienate any form of third party support?
lol who knows :shock:
vBulletin® v3.8.4, Copyright ©2000-2010, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.