badgenome said: Sucks, if true. Recession proof wut?

I wouldn't say it was because of the recession. Making an HD game that tanks seems to sink small to medium size developers. The rumors swirling around Factor 5, Silicon Knights, and now Free Radical lend credence to this. Not mention larger developers like EA, Take 2, and Midway losing money. I think these happenings more than anything will be the reason the Wii starts getting more third party support.

Great idea to leave Rare geniuses.

 Hahaha! They were bashing Halo yeah! And rightfully so! Haze might've been a bad game but Timesplitters was EPIC! And definitely better then Halo! Also, their main staff was part of the people that created Goldeneye on the N64~!

So get your facts together before you start calling Free Radical a shitty dev!

Darc Requiem said: badgenome said: Sucks, if true. Recession proof wut? I wouldn't say it was because of the recession. Making an HD game that tanks seems to sink small to medium size developers. The rumors swirling around Factor 5, Silicon Knights, and now Free Radical lend credence to this. Not mention larger developers like EA, Take 2, and Midway losing money. I think these happenings more than anything will be the reason the Wii starts getting more third party support.

That's true. It's hard to miss that the developers of both Lair and Haze are supposed to be in trouble. I hadn't heard anything about Silicon Knights, but that would make sense.

Agreed that it does bode well for the Wii's third party support, and less so for M$ and -$ony's.

I guess this explains why they were running the platform surveys for TimeSplitters 4. They were trying to find a publisher. It would have been hard for them to survive releasing a game like Haze, but losing the Star Wars project and being unable to secure a publisher for Timesplitters were death blows.

 If I were EA I'd publish TS4 ASAP! As for Nintendo... Now that you're swimming in cash, why not take the oppertunity to make FreeRadical 2nd party... That way you get like half of the former RARE-staff back in the office!... Also, you have an epic FPS in your IP list! Which is still lacking in your 1st and 2nd party stuff!

Did they lose the Star Wars game?

This is the gamble with next-gen development. The cost is so high to make a quality game, that one flop can destroy a company.

A game that sells 500k can be profitable last gen or on the Wii. If it sells 500k as a big budget PS3/XBox game, the company is in trouble. (Haze, Lair, Too Human, etc)

Yeah I have heard it....It is quite sad.

Rare became shit after the guys from FRD left. Now, they are a bit better but not much. And if it wasn't for the fact that they are owned by Microsoft, they would have been dead for a long time.