One of the great downfalls of an acquisition or merger, in the game industry, is the loss of great franchise titles. Sierra, or Sierra Online, once stood on its own as a company with great gaming titles but later fell into the depths of Hades under many different company names.
Sierra’s last stop on the acquisition highway was Vivendi, years after much of Sierra’s steam had slowed. Now, they’re part of Activision Blizzard so we had high hopes they’d find a great use for some of the old Sierra properties long since collecting dust. Space Quest, Kings Quest, Leisure Suit Larry and especially Gabrielle Knight were some of our favorites, but times have changed.
“We are retaining only those franchises that are a strong fit with our long-term strategy including Crash Bandicoot, Ice Age and Spyro, as well as Prototype and a second game that has not yet been announced. We will not publish any other titles that previously were part of the Vivendi Games portfolio and we are currently reviewing our options regarding those titles,” says Activision Blizzard (joystiq)
This is unfortunate news, Activision Blizzard now has a large set of franchises on their hands, many of which have collected dust for years. Those dust collecting franchises could rise from the dead and reinvigorate their old fan base… or be dropped to the earth as unwanted scrapes after a big hunt with the vultures awaiting their take (sorry, too much watching of Animal Planet)
A reworked Kings Quest or Gabriel Knight could have seriously awesome potential in this time and age, imagine a dark comedy version of Gabriel Knight or a huge scaled world in King Quest using todays graphic engines. Although, these titles could also go the way Atari has gone and taken a well remembered franchise and made mud of its great name (*cough* Alone in the Dark).
Unfortunately, we’ll probably never know the distance an old franchise could go in this new world. We’ll have to pull out an old copy of our prized posessions and remember just how great they once where.
@ Halo won’t be a yearly franchise:
Right, I’ll take their word for it. Thing is, with their current schedule, yearly franchise or not, they will have sales for the earlier one eaten up by the later game.
@ Kinect appealed to “more hardcore” than expected:
Microsoft doesn’t have to do anything. I believe that the game developers will manage to create a control scheme for hardcore game(r)s.
@2M users sign up for COD: Elite beta
Protest or not, this is just an improvement in the matchmaking service. Why not play Quake Live?
What I am saying is that there will always somebody willing to do this for free.
@Wizardry Online announced, will feature permadeath:
Permadeath + PVP = niche market. The only thing that can make it worse is high-damage / insta-kill weapons.
Speaking of MMOs:
http://thenoobcomic.com/index.php?pos=19
@How much do you think the Wii U will cost?
Man, I hate price guessing …
I say 150 USD. Middle way between a plain controller and the 3DS. Bare in mind, this is just for the controller.
oh yeah its back
QOTW:
I’d say $350 USD including the console and a controller. Which will probably end up being $550 Australian or more 🙁
QOTW – I’m going to say $350. Probably 250 for the console and 100 for the controller. Maybe less for the controller and more for the console, but I’m thinking somewhere around 300. I can’t see it going much higher than 400 though, I don’t think the casual audience that the Wii appealed to will want to shell out the extra 300+ dollars for a new console. Its going to be interesting to see what the official price is.