Cliffy B leaves Epic!

[JEMC]

DirtyP2002 said:
He will start his own studio I guess. There will be one cliffy B. game for the next years and this is sad news to me. I really liked his work with the Gears franchise.

Look at Bungie (an established studio) and how long it takes them to create a new game after they left MS. 5 years ago they decided to leave MS. 3 years after their last game (Reach) and nothing new is even announced. 2 years since they signed a 10 year contract with Activision. It really takes some time to reorganise a studio our build an entire new one.

Look at the Infinity Ward guys (opening a new studio - Respawn Entertainment) and we don't know anything about it except they signed a contract with EA in April 2010 and we don't know anything yet.

So it sucks that a new Cliffy B. game is years away - even more so if he actually takes a break for a couple of months.

I don't think the hypothetical new studio from Cliff B. can be compared to what happened with Bungie or Respawn.

For the laters there's the lawsuit with EA that I'm sure has made the development of their game to be slow, I'm sure once the lawyers are over and they'll be able to focus on work and we'll get more info about the game, and Bungie was still on charge of supporting Halo in Bungie.net until earlier this year. So the 2 studios were not 100% focused on developing their new games.

Also remember that both studios will probably use their own game engines, and that also needs some time.

Meanwhile Cliff and his hypothetical studio won't have to face past duties or deal with lawyers, and he'll more likely use UE for their games as that's what he is used to. Expect his game in 2 or 3 years (again, if he decides to fund a new studio).