Second Sight might also be a part it, it's an excellent game, but apparently it sold very poorly. It's a shame really, they try to build new IP's next to their established franchise, and are basically going down because of it. Maybe things would have been different if they instead made Timesplitters 4.
Free Radical closes doors.
- Thread starter BoardBonobo
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Second Sight might also be a part it, it's an excellent game, but apparently it sold very poorly. It's a shame really, they try to build new IP's next to their established franchise, and are basically going down because of it. Maybe things would have been different if they instead made Timesplitters 4.
You have a problem with old school?
It could be worse. They could be using Vi.
This leaked footage of their SW Battlefronts 3 shown in November suggests the closure was really dumb and Free Radical were sitting on a very profitable title!
I love Vim... use it all the time for my projects when I don't want to bother loading Eclipse for a quick fix.
:wq
If you think you can judge profitability of a title from a few minutes of off-screen footage, you are wasting your time moderating our babble, as EA have an offer for you
As about "dumb closure"... if I understand correctly, nobody was dumb and nobody closed them. They ran out of money. There's only so much times a publisher can extend his trust towards a developer, when a game is not being finished, no matter what sexy demo movies are produced in the meantime.
As about "dumb closure"... if I understand correctly, nobody was dumb and nobody closed them. They ran out of money. There's only so much times a publisher can extend his trust towards a developer, when a game is not being finished, no matter what sexy demo movies are produced in the meantime.
SW Battlefronts 1 and 2 each sold >5 million units across PS2 and XB. This sequel (factoring in the Off-Screen effect) looked like a well implemented and well progressed version of the same popular game. Thus it looks like another year's would be likely to produce another 5 million seller or so. Unless they were losing money faster than a good success could repay it, I still say it was a dumb closure.If you think you can judge profitability of a title from a few minutes of off-screen footage, you are wasting your time moderating our babble, as EA have an offer for you
You are assuming they were sitting on a pile of money, or had readily available credit, neither of which were the case for a independent developer with a failed last game in the fall of 2008.
No, I mean Lucas Arts should have forwarded the money to keep them open to finish the Battlefronts game. At least, the poor performance of Haze is no reason to abandon the developer without checking out their other current works. If the company itself were abysmal, perhaps with a huge contract overrun, or these videos hide an utterly attrocious game mechanic under the nice visuals and mo-cap cutscenes, than pulling out and shifting Battlefronts 3 to someone else would make sense and be a lot fairer IMO. Otherwise I think Free Radical should have been allowed to finish and profit from SWB3, instead have being terminated months from the end and the earnings of the SWB3 going to whatever company picks it up.
What about TS4? What are the chances that will be passed onto another dev?
Lucas may not have been in a position to do so, or they may have looked at the game and decided to cut their losses. They had a fairly big round of layoffs last year and cut a number of projects.
...which is Rebellion Developments (who did the PSP Battlefront game).
I find this reply kind of amusing considering you have no idea what state battlefronts was in.
Without knowing how much more time and investments finishing up SWB3 would cost, how can you possibly reply with any valuable insight with regards to the question if they should have invested more or terminate the project?
I have an idea, not very accurate, but clearly it was well progressed from the vid and looking good and, most importantly, recognisably Battlefronts.
Lots of games are funded to completion that sell less than 1-2 million. SWB3 looks like it would sell much more than that. So unless they had already spent a 5 million seller's profits on creating SWB3 and would expect further costs to be more than they'd make in returns, it has to be a probably-good investment. And indeed, the financial viability of the title isn't being doubted as the project hasn't been dropped, only moved. The question is why wasn't Free Radical continuing it if the title is expected to make money? Were they overspending? Or bankrupt before they could finish it? I guess there was more than just finance involved, like perhaps they overran the contract deadline, lost the contract and thus funding, and that led to their demise. Maybe.
Agreed.
Maybe because Lucas Arts came to the conclusion that Free Radical did to their job well enough?
I mean, i find it amusing that people go ahead and suggest they should do this and that, when we have to assume that atleast a few half competent people had to be involved in figuring out how to fix this 10+ million dollar project. Given that they know all the fact, i reckon there is a good chance that their decision is the better one, if only because of the fact that the people in charge knew everything thats needed to know regarding Free Radicals performance.
Suggestions on how they should have handled this, when the people in charge of the decisions obviously knows far more than we know about the situation at hand, are imo silly.
Its completely based on your imagination of how decent FR is as a developer and your imagination about how long the game is in development etc, its basically your own little farytale. Meanwhile the people that put them off the project, based their decision on real life facts (lets hope so), not their imaginations.
You're being just a tad extreme here, Ostepop! I only posted an off-the-cuff post about FR and the leaked SWB3 footage. It certainly wasn't an in-depth, well considered opinion that I had mulled over. Nor do I seriously think whoever moved the title from FR had no idea what they were doing. Quite the contrary, I trust they were in a good position to make that call. However, it's still something worth discussing in light of FR's closure. They were developing what looks set to be a lucrative title and seem to have progressed it in a good way, which begs the question why was it moved from them? The sensible, well informed opinions of the decision makers seemed to think it a good idea to get another party involved, and yet finishing someone else's project off is not an easy task!
Buddies and I played some TS2 tonight--I'm gonna miss that studio. But even considering that, it's hard to miss the really blatant flaws in TS2 and TS3. I think TS2 is remembered so fondly because there was nothing else on the GC at the time that was any good, at least as far as multiplayer FPS goes.
TS2: Terrible controls (no crosshair?!), useless pistols, significant sound bugs (at least on GC), some maps are way too maze-like.
TS3: Too few maps, useless gun turrets, and most were simply far too big. FR clearly got starry-eyed over Live and thought that every match would have 8 to 16 players.
It was kind of frustrating, because TS3 largely fixed the bugs, controls, and weapon balance. One problem is that there were no levels comparable to Scrapyard, Ice Station, or Site.
So they were a good developer, but they also were lacking what it took to be AAA.
TS2: Terrible controls (no crosshair?!), useless pistols, significant sound bugs (at least on GC), some maps are way too maze-like.
TS3: Too few maps, useless gun turrets, and most were simply far too big. FR clearly got starry-eyed over Live and thought that every match would have 8 to 16 players.
It was kind of frustrating, because TS3 largely fixed the bugs, controls, and weapon balance. One problem is that there were no levels comparable to Scrapyard, Ice Station, or Site.
So they were a good developer, but they also were lacking what it took to be AAA.
I have some great memories playing TimeSplitters at the launch of the PS2. Easiest my most played game behind SSX at the time. That level editor was awesome and really made it a great multiplayer game. It would be great to have a FPS with such a simple but good level editor and be able to play that online...
