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Epic Games Signs Microsoft Publishing Deal
Thanks to Gamers.com for the news that Unreal creators Epic have signed a long-term publishing deal with Microsoft. According to the piece, "Microsoft will publish 'several' future Epic projects - as yet unnamed - exclusively for Xbox and Windows", and it's noted that "Epic is the sole owner of the Unreal name and franchise", although Atari is still publishing Unreal Tournament 2004 for PC this November. Included in the Microsoft deal are two projects from new Epic offshoot Scion Studios, promising to "explore development opportunities within Epic Games' established action titles, and beyond", possibly implying at least one Unreal-branded, Microsoft-published title - unless the "established action title" in question is Jazz Jackrabbit.
I'm going to miss those Linux ports.
Reminds me of when MS bought Rare (unconfirmed, my little bro says so).
Time to boycott Unreal. Quake still seems to be un-bought, right?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Yes, MS owns Rare, Nintendo dumped them a year or so ago after Rare failed to generate any sort of significant revenue.
It is however unclear as to if Rare is going to be much use for MS though. In their last couple of years working with nintendo, Rare had gained a notorious rep for failing to get anything released even close to its deadline (perfect dark, starfox adventures and some others were all 2 years or more late) And their recent efforts while solid, have of late lacked the craftsmanship that their earlier work did. Some of this is because a good chunk of their staff left Rare to form the developer "Free Radical" some of the burnout may have just been related to not wanting to work with Nintendo anymore, who knows.
Epic wasn't much of a player on the console market in the first place, Sony might miss the Unreal ports but i don't think they did all that well anyway did they? I don't know, I mean Epic is a good name but I can think of other developers that would be better targets. Afterall, MS isn't trying to gain new games, they are trying to keep games away from the other consoles.
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
From the article: "Microsoft will publish "several" future Epic projects -- as yet unnamed projects -- exclusively for Xbox and Windows ." (my emphasis). Not "XBox and PC", which could have given leeway in the OS department. No, this would be an appropriate point to say fare-thee-well to Linux clients of any future Epic games. Dropping linux servers is less likely, though Microsoft would probably pressure Epic to drop them as well.