Black Isle Studios, one of Interplay’s most prominent divisions, is being shut down according to sources within the team. We can say goodbye to any plans for Fallout 3 all thanks to Interplay’s greedy desire to focus on nothing but the home console market.
Once again, I feel jaded by the games industry. Well at least BioWare isn’t going to betray its PC audience, or is that yet another inevitability? The money lies in the console market and nowhere else, right?
Tip: Don’t have faith in any game company. When you do you’re only heading for a fall. Don’t become so enamored with Bioware, for they will let you down sooner or later.
Kinda reminds me of Sega…
Aye, Sega is the main company behind my reasoning. Though there are others.
I can hardly believe this. Black Isle Studios has been one of my favourite developers for a long time. They were set to release Dark Alliance 2 (PS2 and X-Box) and Brotherhood of Steel (X-Box) which suggests they were focusing on the console industry more than they had done previously. Interplay, it seems, wants to abandon its PC audience altogether in favour of quick profits in the console market.
My list of favourite developers is getting shorter and shorter. Why is that?
I can understand why money is a concern for these companies but when it becomes the only concern then they begin to sacrifice the creativity that helped them rise to their positions of fame in the industry.
Money > loyalty to fans. You can’t blme companies for thinking this way though.
Some companies are so rich now you’d think they could give their development teams some room to maneuver.
If it wasn’t for Black Isle Studios we wouldn’t have Fallout or Baldur’s Gate, and BioWare (who co-produced the Baldur’s Gate series with BIS) wouldn’t have gone on to develop Neverwinter Nights.
Who would’ve thought that one developer could have such a domino effect on the industry?
Interplay’s solution to its dwindling profits is to disband one of its most creative and famous divisions merely because it wants to prioritise the development of console games (Black Isle Studios was a PC RPG developer first and foremost). I hope Dark Alliance 2 sells a million copies just to remind Interplay of what they’ve recklessly cast aside.
Once a company gets a taste of money, they want to use it to make more money. And more… and more and more. Money becomes the company’s precioussss.