“Microsoft partnered with Darkside Game Studios in the development of ‘Phantom Dust,’ but our working relationship has now ended,” a Microsoft spokesperson said. “We have great respect for their studio and their work in the industry. While we do not have anything new to share on ‘Phantom Dust’ at this time, we can confirm that development of the title continues. We look forward to sharing more details on the game as we get closer to release.”
Hopefully this game doesn’t become The Last Guardian of Xbox One.
I guess all I really care about is whether Yukio Futatsugi is involved or not? But after the treatment CD got I don’t know if anything is a good thing anyway.
The best move MS could make is buy out SEGA, put Futatsugi-san or some other veteran of the old spirit in charge and then get completely out of their way… hey I can dream right?
It’s still not clear to me if this is a remake, reboot, or remaster. If it’s just an HD remastering, there’s probably no need for Futatsugi’s direct involvement. If it’s a remake or reboot, I can see Futatsugi’s involvement being positive.
With Crimson Dragon, I don’t think the issue was that he has lost his touch, but rather that the constraints of the project lowered the quality of the game. If Crimson Dragon had been designed as a controller based game from the ground up, I suspect the overall quality would have been a lot higher.
I meant the treatment of the Crimson Dragon project by MS, and given that the whole game was designed around Kinect use / limitations I think that’s the root of what people find lacking in it, playing with a pad now. Aside from the intrusive IAP shit. So I don’t imagine Futatsugi had ultimate control over how the game turned out either.
Phantom Dust is an Xbox One reboot of the 2005 Xbox game of the same name. According to the source, the plan was to make the reboot “70% original game, 30% new.”
“Over time that turned into ‘remake Phantom Dust,’ so that was our goal for the last half of development. We were going to update and streamline a very dated game (especially their menu system and horribly paced single player), but otherwise it was going to be a reboot/remake. I’d say we were probably trending towards an 85% remake, 15% new,” the source said.
I would describe the “pacing” of the single player in the original game as inspired myself. This rings a very sour note on the whole project for me, but maybe they were going to screw it up somehow and someone actually saw it, and that’s why they got the boot. Or not. Either way I sure hope the game doesn’t come out all sanitized for mainstream appeal, especially if it’s mostly a remake, it will never be fully mainstream regardless.