Just a few days since Nothingham based Free Radical Design closed their studio. New rumours have arisen that another former Nintendo-related studio is shutting down! This time it's Factor 5. Famed for their, arguably, best looking Cube-game that was even a launch-title and a million-selling hit!
What do these developers have in common:
-Former Nintendo related developer!
-Both focused most of their resources on 1 game for a HD-platform.
-Both games failed to meet the high pre-launch standards and weren't able to sell enough to recoup the invested money.
-Both studios enjoyed both critical as well as gamers praise because of their enjoyable and well-received games.
What does this learn us; I think one cannot blame their platform choise, which in these two cases is the PS3. For that platform also has (and has had back then already) a big enough installed base to enjoy million+ sales if the games were good and marketing + word of mouth would spark more sales. These developers have always had Nintendo to back them up and to supervise them in their development process. Free Radical was able to stand their ground and even grow to a 100+ team in the last generation. Which was because their Timesplitters series was a huge succes! Haze was rushed out because they needed the money, they only had 1 game in the pipeline for the whole year and you have to pay monthly salaries to your employees! Same goes for Lair! If given the means and the time, I figure it would have been a good game! Not only on the graphics department!
Sadly the news of Factor 5 coming down comes only a few days after that of Free Radical! Both developers have been known to have good contacts still with Nintendo and the former was even rumoured to have a new iteration of the Kid Icarus IP in development as we speak! Also, Timesplitters 4 was something a lot of gamers (and a lot of shooter-fans) looked forward to! So I hope another developer that has almost the same background as these two, namely Silicon Knights, will have another path laid out for them! For they also shined in the last generation on the back of Nintendo with games as Eternal Darkness and MGS: The Twin Snakes on Gamecube. Both games received high reviewscores. Although their sales weren't in-line with these reviews, sadly! Their latest game, which also required almost all of their resources, flopped too! Too Human DEFINITELY didn't meet the high expectations and DEFINITELY not the sales needed to recoupe these financial investments... The game had been in development for the PSX, Cube and then the X360. 10 years, and no succes, equals financial disaster for such a small one!
Maybe these studios will be able to get acquired by Nintendo, since they are looking to find more influence in Western Development studios and have warehouses of cash with which they don't know what to do! I'm sure these developers are able to, maybe with the help of Nintendo, regain ability to be profitable! For they have been able to be so in the past!
Otherwise! I say goodbye to, now two out of three, developers that were able to give the Gamecube in particular, a reason to be a proud owner of in the past! Goodbye Factor 5, goodbye Free Radical Design. And I hope, as of now, NOT goodbye Silicon Knights! I honestly hope Nintendo will acquire these devs once again and make their hardcore fanbase proud!
Thanks for reading! StarcraftManiac!
THE NETHERLANDS
