No more UNITY!

[StefanS]

Today is a very sad day!

Commenting on the decision to halt work on Unity, Peter Molyneux said, “Everyone at Lionhead has the utmost respect and admiration for Jeff’s unique talents. However, we’ve both been in the industry a long time and it was becoming increasingly apparent to us that we would not be able to finish Unity in an acceptable time frame. On a personal level, I have very much enjoyed working with Jeff.â€

Jeff Minter responded, “Everyone at Lionhead has been incredibly supportive and the decision to stop working on Unity has been a difficult one for us. But being realistic, I felt it was better for everyone concerned that we cease work on Unity. I’d like to thank Lionhead for all their help and support over the past two years.â€

"It’s been a horrible decision for us to have to make, but in the end we’ve had to make it. Basically, although I’ve built a shedload of stuff for Unity in the past couple of years it’s become clear that getting it all together into something that I’d be happy to call Unity and put my name to was going to take a lot of time and effort both from myself and the guys at Lionhead, and realistically it was becoming unlikely that it’d be finished in time for anyone to want to publish it on Gamecube. The alternative would be a rush job and we simply didn’t want to do that. Best to call it a day. "

http://www.planetgamecube.com/news.cfm?action=item&id=5897

This is definitely a downer!

 

[Guden Oden]

That's what bad project management does to a title. Gets it cancelled after years of work, and with no end in sight.

In comparison, look at the Lord of the Rings movies. Anyone who's watched the documentaries on the three extended edition box sets know what an enormous undertaking that was, and despite all the challenges of literally creating a separate universe - and often starting out with people with no previous experience of such a huge project - still carry it out ON TIME with such spectacular results.

 

[JacksBleedingEyes]

While I see where you are going with this I don't think ill agree. Primarily because Minter our dear friend was doing this on his own. Project management or no project management, there is a difference when you have an army behind you.

 

[StefanS]

While I see where you are going with this I don't think ill agree. Primarily because Minter our dear friend was doing this on his own. Project management or no project management, there is a difference when you have an army behind you.

Yeah, he was doing it more or less on his own. This news is kind of disappointing as Minter was showcasing Unity at a clubbing in London some time ago. However, if I reading the PR release correctly, he'll continue working on the title or the technology behind it. So maybe it is just delayed to the next gen, at least that's what I hope for.

 

[Guden Oden]

While I see where you are going with this I don't think ill agree. Primarily because Minter our dear friend was doing this on his own.

Wasn't Lionhead financing him?

Anyway, at what point did he suddenly wake up and go like, 'HMMM... I've made all this stuff, but where's the game?!'

What was the Original Plan? Even Daikatana had A PLAN, it was just the execution of it that wasn't all that great.

If Jeff was out to create some cool new technology shit or whatever, no wonder it didn't work. On the other hand, if he knew what kind of game he wanted to make, WHY DIDN'T HE STICK TO IT?

Looks from what the PR he spent more effort on the means rather than the end, which of course is d00mzOr3d.

 

[Kalin]

Who says Minter doesn't want to continue developing Unity?

We don't have a clue what happened, and it just might be Lionhead that wanted to end it, and focus on publishing next gen titles... after all they did cancel another title a few months earlier, there might be something going on there. We don't know.

 

[zurich]

That's too bad, but really, it was a rip off of Rez 8)

 

[Dio]

Crikey, so many people in the Console forum are so bloody negative.

Unity was a great concept. Like many great concepts, some come to fruition, some don't. Jeff's stated that the R&D that was involved will not be wasted, but Unity-as-envisioned-on-Gamecube would be too late to be viable. Which doesn't mean I'm not going to miss it, it's one of the reasons I bought a Cube this year, but Pikmins and SMBs have more than made up for it.

Out of the darkness will come light.

Quite literally, in VLM's case