After months of bad omens, the end has finally come for the veteran RPG developer.
It looks like role-playing gamers will have a boulder of coal stuffed in their holiday stockings this year, as GameSpot has received reliable reports that Interplay has shut down Black Isle Studios.
While nothing has been confirmed by official sources as of press time, Damien "Puuk" Foletto, a member of BIS' art department, broke the news on the Interplay forums late this afternoon. "Today was my last day at the (former) BIS, as it was for my whole team," he said. To date, Foletto's posts have been one of the most reliable sources of news on the development of Fallout 3 (aka Van Buren) including the departure of his former co-worker J.E. Sawyer.
Black Isle's closure is a sad end for the once-great developer. BIS had a hand in some of the most acclaimed PC RPGs of the late 1990s, including the Fallout and Baldur's Gate series. Recently, though, the studio fell on hard times. Its forthcoming Dungeons & Dragons title, code-named "Jefferson," was canned earlier this year, reportedly a casualty of a legal tangle with D&D rights-holders Wizards of the Coast. A host of top-quality talent has fled the studio, including legendary producer Feargus Urqhart.
However, it looks like the financial woes of BIS' parent Interplay finally did the developer in. Interplay has lost over $20 million so far this year. Its two main holiday releases, the console RPGs Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel and Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II (which was developed by BIS), were pushed back to next January as a result of another legal dispute, this time with distributor VU Games. Interplay's refocusing on console games may have also been a factor in the decision to shutter its more PC-centric subsidiary.
Regardless of the reasons, the closure of BIS will hit many gamers hard. Foletto's final post seemed particularly depressing. "I don't know where I'll end up," he said, "but [people should] know that we were all avid gamers and wanted to make the PC games that not only we wanted to play, but also the fans."
This essentially means Interplay is no more. Black Isle was nearly all of Interplay that was left. There might be a team or two there who weren't Black Isle, but virtually all of their games in recent years were BIS... Haven is the only recent exception I can think of. So Interplay isn't 100% dead -- they still have a few mediocre console development teams left.
(hint: that means they're dead)
Interplay... they've never been a consistently good developer, but their heights have been very, very high. Seeing their slow and inevitable decline over the past couple of years has been very painful... their slide from a major publisher with 15 games a year to one struggling to release two, from successful to bankruptcy, seeing it bought by a multinational company (Titus), seeing its founder leave, seeing the endless lawsuits, losing the Star Trek liscence, losing the Dungeons & Dragons liscence... seeing the leader of BIS leave... and now seeing the one bright light left in the building (really, the only part of the company that matters... oh, sure, they have a console team somewhere, but has Interplay ever been known for great console games?)
It's not RIP yet... but it either will be soon, or we won't care. Without BIS Interplay is nothing. Maybe a publisher for a game or two like Lionheart and developer of the occasional mediocre console game... what a sad and depressing fate for a company with as great a resume of games as Interplay. (once you ignore the bad and mediocre games, which I have no problem in doing...)
BIS... one of the best RPG developers ever. I mean...
Since 1997... one of the best runs of RPGs of all time. Fallout. Fallout 2. Planescape: Torment. Icewind Dale. Icewind Dale II. Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance. And significant help in making Bioware's Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate II.
Their final legacy will be Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance II... which won't be out for a few months but I'm pretty sure is finished. (Fallout: Blades of Steel wasn't by BIS). (for a Nintendo-related note, neither of those games are coming for Cube, just X-Box and PS2.)
Honestly, the most amazing thing here is that the people at BIS managed to focus on making games at all in the last two-plus years... they didn't finish one, due to losing the D&D liscence and then this, but still... shows something for them. Poor guys... I hope they go work with Fearqus Urquhart or JE Sawyer and make some new games on the level of what they have done before... :( :(
(yes, yes, I know I'm rambling badly... but this just stinks so bad...)
Oh yeah, Interplay sold the extremely-long-in-development (think over five years) Galleon to SC-i and the game is now X-Box only, and will come out next spring.
So that leaves what left that Interplay is making... uhh... BGDA2, BIS's last game, FO: BOS, the bad-looking action-RPGish game... and uh... nothing else...
Interplay is a company built on PC-style RPGs, as well as some of every other genre... they had great adventure games (such as The Last Express), action games (Descent), myriad RPGs, strategy games (such as Conquest of a New World), platformers (like Blizz's Lost Vikings)... so many... and now the company is about as living and worth paying attention to as Sierra's internal development teams. Yeah, they have made plenty of console games before, and published good ones, too... but their greatest strength has always been their Computer RPGs, by far. From the early '90s with things like Dragon Wars to recent ones like Icewind Dale II... and they just threw that all away and trashed their one great remaining team.
"Interplay is console only".
This stinks.
They should change their slogan from "By Gamers, For Gamers" to "By Money-grubbers, For Stupid Console Masses"...
Now all anyone who has ever liked their games can do is look to Obsidian (the name of the studio started by the previous round of people who left Interplay) and hope that they can become a replacement for what is now gone.
Here's to hoping that someone, sometime, will match the sheer brilliance of Planescape Torment. Interplay won't.
Quote:Sega thinks one of the Simpsons games is a bit too much like Crazy Taxi, and is suing.
Simpsons Road Rage is a product of developer Radical Games, and publishers Fox Interactive (now Vivendi) and Electronic Arts. Sega is taking all these parties to court for infringing on a patent that it holds for Crazy Taxi.
Sega says that the year-old Road Rage game was designed to "deliberately copy and imitate" Crazy Taxi, using reviews from numerous publications as sources. The suit wants a halt to sales of the game, recalls of copies currently at retail, and lost profits in the form of damages repaid to Sega.
EA or Vivendi had not seen the lawsuit, and were unavailable for comment.
The game is strikingly reminiscent of Crazy Taxi, but enough for a lawsuit? I don't think you can patent a genre.
The funny part is how concerned EA and Vivendi must be, judging from that last line
Quote:Acclaim, eh? What will they think of next? According to reports, Acclaim have begun preparations for a brave new marketing campaign to promote their newest offering "Gladiator: Sword Of Vengeance"
The campaign will see posters for the game on the streets equipped with "blood packs" (no, not the guys from Blade 2) that will ooze out time-released red liquid onto the posters and the streets. Preparing for this, Acclaim have hired cleaners to monitor the posters and ensure that hygiene and safety laws are maintained on the streets.
This is the next in a long line of "innovative" marketing stunts pulled by the company to promote its games. Lest we forget, a bunch of idiots legally changed their names to Turok in order to publicise Acclaims shoddy FPS franchise. I can't help but feel Acclaims efforts would be more wisely directed into making the games better and innovative rather than their marketing campaigns.
I can't help but think the money would be better spent making their games better or at the very least not so bad.
Quote:Microsoft to gouge for flash memory FAT licences
$quarter per device, or $250,000 per company
By INQUIRER staff: Thursday 04 December 2003, 21:48
IT SEEMS that Microsoft has decided to pull in some old patents and start charging manufacturers of flash devices who may use the FAT file system in their gizmos.
Microsoft claims rights to the FAT file system back to 1976, and it has made a few changes since then, as we recall only too well.
The new scheme is based on a few patents including this lot, U.S. Patent #5,579,517, U.S. Patent #5,745,902, U.S. Patent #5,758,352, and U.S. Patent #6,286,013.
Microsoft also claims that it's filed a claim for a patent that the US Patent Office hasn't yet granted, which will extend to products outside the US.
It is apparently offering companies a licence where they pay either a $quarter per unit or a $quarter of a million per manufacturer.
Pricing for devices that aren't the kind of flash you find in TVs, video cameras, printers, musical instruments, audio players, digital cameras and others can apparently be negotiated with the Vole.
That'd be Smartphones, then.
The licence will be conditional on the FAT system being used on a device being compliant with Microsoft standards.
Companies might like to negotiate narrower or broader licences with the Vole.
And yes, you may not need a licence for a device which isn't formatted, but if it ends up using FAT you probably do need one, it appears.
Almost unbelievable. But it's true.
Point is, if Microsoft is going to push and shove manufacturers in Taiwan or China to license its FAT system, it may just end up pushing these manufacturers straight into the arms of other OSes, such as Linux. Or even IBM PC DOS, which is still its own entity. µ
That's right! Two things, first off, I have invented a word to describe that phenomenon when a site starts spraying advertising for one product all over their format. Second off, GameFAQs now has pages where the format is altered to incorporate all manner of advertising for things, just like IGN. Check out their Gamecube page to see for yourself. Fortunatly, it's a LOT tamer than what IGN does (just a banner ad and a color change).
Only the British one mind you. Now, first off since they are in fact a private organization (I think :D), they can do as they will. However, they are called the Red CROSS! Under this new rule, won't they have to change their name? Unless they mean to go to what the cross USED to represent, that is pain and suffering.
The latest issue of Nintendo Dream magazine offers clarification as to exactly what games will be included when Nintendo publishes The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords for GameCube in Japan next February. The four-player action-RPG based on the 16-bit Link to the Past will also include a few of the other experimental projects shown at E3 this year.
In addition to the main Four Swords adventure, where four players can control four Links using the Game Boy Advance or GameCube controller for cooperative play, the disc will also include the Tetra's Trackers stamp-collecting game shown at E3. Tetra's Trackers, starring the eponymous pirate queen in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, challenges four players to hunt up hidden items around a series of large levels.
The disc will also include two games for single-player action. One, called "Shadow Battle," is a survival-type game where Link must battle a continuous stream of opponents. The other, entitled "Hyrule Adventure," is a more involved story-driven single-player campaign with some gameplay elements, like time travel, drawn from Link to the Past.
As mentioned above, Four Swords is scheduled for retail release in Japan in February. Nintendo has yet to confirm a Japanese retail price for the game, however, or any details regarding an American release. We'll update with the pertinent details as they arrive.
Awesome. Now it's worth $50! I hope that Hyrule Adventure mode is decently-sized.
