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?
MS only has Top Spin. Well, what do you have to say now Qroach?
Links and Amped dev sold to Take Two
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MightyHedgehog
Newcomer
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.
other than it's not a big deal?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?
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?
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.MightyHedgehog said:
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.
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.Qroach said:
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.jarrod said:
Johnny Awesome
Veteran
This paves the way for EA Sports Xbox 2 exclusivity. Madden 2006... only on Xbox 2. Could be...
DUH. I realize the news had to break. Don't be stupid.Qroach said:
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.
Inane_Dork said:
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
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.
MightyHedgehog
Newcomer
jarrod said:
Really?! What the hell are they thinking?! Crazy...I loved Amped and Links is a legendary franchise...
*sniff*
I did not say it was not understandable, either. I've heard all the rationales. Heck, I've used most all of them myself.AzBat said:
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.
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.Qroach said:
No... really? I don't know all the projects? Surely you jest!
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.
Inane_Dork said:
Unreal Championship 2 is cancelled?! And I thought it looked pretty neat...
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
Veteran
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.