27th January 2003, 12:55 PM
Thought of another one... Psygnosis. They've been completely dissasembled by Sony. Anyone remember when in the '80s and well into the '90s Psygnosis was a PC developer first and console second? They were... then Sony came in and started taking over. The last PC games Sony allowed them to publish came out several years ago -- Lemmings Revolution and Death Track Racing (the renamed version of Rollcage Stage 2). Since then? PSX/2 only...
I bet that in a few years Maxis might come apart. (by that I mean Will Wright might leave... he really IS Maxis...) Richard Garriott left Origin after a while under EA control. Same with Chris Roberts (Origin's Wing Commander) and Peter Molyneux with Bullfrog... or Sid Meier when Microprose was bought...
The only good sign for that kind of thing is Blizz has some big names but not one single person considered a clearly top member... Also, they've been owned by corporations for years. Davidson bought them years ago... then Havas, then CUC, now Vivendi. And Blizz hasn't changed. However, none of those were really gaming companies... Davidson was closest and it was mostly productivity/educational products. A MS or EA is different... they are gaming-focused. Still... all we can do is hope that either this fails, isn't true, or if it does happen that Blizz won't become the next Origin or Bullfrog or Microprose.
Oh, and other than Ghost being cancelled for Cube and PS2, the other immediate MS thing would almost certainly be the removal of Mac versions of any future Blizz games.
I bet that in a few years Maxis might come apart. (by that I mean Will Wright might leave... he really IS Maxis...) Richard Garriott left Origin after a while under EA control. Same with Chris Roberts (Origin's Wing Commander) and Peter Molyneux with Bullfrog... or Sid Meier when Microprose was bought...
The only good sign for that kind of thing is Blizz has some big names but not one single person considered a clearly top member... Also, they've been owned by corporations for years. Davidson bought them years ago... then Havas, then CUC, now Vivendi. And Blizz hasn't changed. However, none of those were really gaming companies... Davidson was closest and it was mostly productivity/educational products. A MS or EA is different... they are gaming-focused. Still... all we can do is hope that either this fails, isn't true, or if it does happen that Blizz won't become the next Origin or Bullfrog or Microprose.
Oh, and other than Ghost being cancelled for Cube and PS2, the other immediate MS thing would almost certainly be the removal of Mac versions of any future Blizz games.