After announcing most Zenimax games will be exclusive to PC and Xbox, now the rumors are swirling that Microsoft will buy Discord, the mammoth VOIP that is rivaling Twitch and Facebook for active users.
The news includes:
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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.
Last week’s episode was delayed by Jonah producing a new show (The Jonah Falcon Show), then by the tragedy on Sunday, August 26. Now, the podcast recorded last week and the one recorded this week have been merged into one big 2+ hour show.
Last week’s news items included:
This past week’s news was simple:
To be fair, the crew ended up talking about other stuff going on during the week, including the the E3 demo for Cyberpunk 2077 that was finally released to the general public. Gaming still brings smiles to people’s faces.
This week includes a Gaming Flashback about the sticky puzzle game World of Goo, which was one of the first games released without DLC — which is one of the main themes running through this podcast: videogame obsolescence. The guys also discuss James Gunn’s work on Lollipop Chainsaw and speedrun cheating.
The news for the week includes:
All this and Listener Feedback.
