Wesley Posted December 20, 2008 Author Posted December 20, 2008 Ah man, just posted a thread about that! EDIT: Here's a link explaining what's come out from the closure. http://kotaku.com/5114861/free-radical-founder-sets-up-new-studio
Fierce_LiNk Posted December 20, 2008 Posted December 20, 2008 Jesus Christ. With news like this, it really is hard to see the silver lining with this cloud. What a huge loss for the gaming industry. These are two companies I never really would have suspected to be in trouble. Maybe I just haven't been paying close attention, though. Still.
Hellfire Posted December 20, 2008 Posted December 20, 2008 Ah man, just posted a thread about that! EDIT: Here's a link explaining what's come out from the closure. http://kotaku.com/5114861/free-radical-founder-sets-up-new-studio That company was created before Free Radical went into administration though.
Shino Posted December 20, 2008 Posted December 20, 2008 The kind of games both this companies make aren't viable for independent developers, even developers this good occasionally have bad luck and all it takes is one bad game to bring a great dev down. They need some publisher behind that supports them through bad times and large development cicles. I'm sure Rare would have gone the same way if it wasn't backed by Microsoft.
Wesley Posted December 20, 2008 Author Posted December 20, 2008 That company was created before Free Radical went into administration though. Yeah, but it seems to suggest the founders knew FR were going down the pan and set-up this studio in preperation.
Hellfire Posted December 20, 2008 Posted December 20, 2008 Yeah, but it seems to suggest the founders knew FR were going down the pan and set-up this studio in preperation. Maybe, but the founders left Rare to form FR too, so who knows. But yeah, it's likely.
McPhee Posted December 21, 2008 Posted December 21, 2008 That company was created before Free Radical went into administration though. My bet is still on TS4 not turning out very well. They'd have had a publisher if any publisher thought there was any money behind it. Free Radical will go bust, that new developer will buy the rights to their franchises and start again with a more streamlined (read: more profitable and more skilled) team. It's not like these guys haven't done similar before
Hellfire Posted December 21, 2008 Posted December 21, 2008 My bet is still on TS4 not turning out very well. They'd have had a publisher if any publisher thought there was any money behind it. Free Radical will go bust, that new developer will buy the rights to their franchises and start again with a more streamlined (read: more profitable and more skilled) team. It's not like these guys haven't done similar before I think they'll start fresh with a new, smaller budgeted IP or someone will sugar daddy them. Goldeneye, Perfect Dark ->Timesplitters They'll probably do the same. I wouldn't be surprised if WiiWare/XBLA/PSN would be their main bet, buying an IP doesn't make a lot of sense for a new company, specially with the economy as it is. It's possible that TS4 wasn't turning out good for sure after seeing Haze, but publishers look at the money it could make and since their last 3 games have been bombing and the games that sell on HD consoles are very well known brands with millions behind advertising I can see how no one would pick it up even if the game was turning out good.
Zechs Merquise Posted December 21, 2008 Posted December 21, 2008 Pretty much spot on. There must be lots of companies barely managing to stay alive because of their not very wise huge "investments" in lots of HD games, where they just went all out and spent loads of money. I just hope the demise of FR has sent a message to developers ignoring the Wii and just putting their eggs in the highly unstable 'HD' basket.
ViPeR Posted January 16, 2009 Posted January 16, 2009 There's some early Star Wars Battlefront 3 footage that's been leaked. It looked so awesome and now it's dead. The ability to fly from the planet surface into space was so cool. It's such a shame this game will never come around.
Cube Posted January 16, 2009 Posted January 16, 2009 Wow...the battles looked amazingly epic in scale. The running looked a tad glitchy (but that would have certainly be sorted later on in development). The flying bits looked a million times better than Battlefront 2. Why did Lucasarts take it away? Can't they handle good Star Wars games now?
Deathjam Posted January 16, 2009 Posted January 16, 2009 There's some early Star Wars Battlefront 3 footage that's been leaked. It looked so awesome and now it's dead. The ability to fly from the planet surface into space was so cool. It's such a shame this game will never come around. Yeah i saw this in the early hours and it did look incredible. It looks too good to go to waste though.
Nolan Posted January 16, 2009 Posted January 16, 2009 What does Battlefront 3 have to do with Free Radical? The Battlefront games were done by Pandemic.
Cube Posted January 16, 2009 Posted January 16, 2009 What does Battlefront 3 have to do with Free Radical? The Battlefront games were done by Pandemic. Battlefront 3 was given to Free Radical. The leaked footage is from Free Radical's build of Battlefront 3.
jammy2211 Posted January 16, 2009 Posted January 16, 2009 Battlefront 3 has been moved to another developer, they did the PSP version of battlefront I think. It's still alive, just that build has been moved to a team who didn't build it, and have never worked on PS360. 0_o.
ViPeR Posted January 16, 2009 Posted January 16, 2009 I don't think it's even the same build. Apparently everything was scrapped from FR's battlefront. So we will probably never see this game, in that form. I still don't get what happened with Lucasarts, did they take the project away because FR was in financial trouble or because they didn't like what they saw? If it's the latter then they're the ones who should go under.
Cube Posted January 16, 2009 Posted January 16, 2009 I don't think it's even the same build. Apparently everything was scrapped from FR's battlefront. So we will probably never see this game, in that form. I still don't get what happened with Lucasarts, did they take the project away because FR was in financial trouble or because they didn't like what they saw? If it's the latter then they're the ones who should go under. According to Kotaku, the build has been passed on. Unfortunately the air-to-space technology didn't get passed on and will be done via cutscenes. Which to me suggests that the new developers aren't even trying.
ViPeR Posted January 17, 2009 Posted January 17, 2009 I don't have much hope of a PSP developer matching anything like what we saw in FRs game. Shame.
Cube Posted January 23, 2009 Posted January 23, 2009 An update on Battlefront: Rebellion (the folks behind the PSP Battlefront) started work on the PS2 version of Battlefront 3 while Free Radical made the 360, PS3 and Wii versions. So now Rebellion are porting their PS2 version to other consoles, using art assets from Free Radical's version. Which is a massive shame.
ViPeR Posted January 23, 2009 Posted January 23, 2009 Wow, my hype meter for this just dropped to -10000000.
Jimbob Posted January 23, 2009 Posted January 23, 2009 An update on Battlefront: Rebellion (the folks behind the PSP Battlefront) started work on the PS2 version of Battlefront 3 while Free Radical made the 360, PS3 and Wii versions. So now Rebellion are porting their PS2 version to other consoles, using art assets from Free Radical's version. Which is a massive shame. Tis a shame, those shots above look pretty good. Have to see what Rebellion will do graphically to enhance Battlefront.
Recommended Posts