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Psychonauts Parts Ways With Microsoft

Posted by simoniker on from the floating-away dept.

Thanks to IGN Xbox for its article revealing that long-awaited Xbox platform title Psychonauts has been dropped by publisher Microsoft. According to an official statement: "Microsoft Game Studios has made the decision to end its publishing agreement with DoubleFine... [It] believes in the vision of the title and would like to see the game on Xbox... [and] is supporting Tim Schafer and DoubleFine in their search for a new publisher." There are some fine-looking comics on DoubleFine's news page, but no comment as yet from the developers regarding plans for one of the most long-awaited, intriguing-to-many Xbox platform/action games.

4 of 29 comments (clear)

  1. Want my card? by superultra · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The sports series, I understand. Oddworld made sense. Tork, of course. Ed Fries getting canned was a little mystifying, but the "high" knowledge that is company politik is not for us to speculate on.

    But this. This? This sounds like someone at Microsoft accidently hit the delete button on their Projects Pending page. This was the one artistically creative title Microsoft had going for it, and now it's gone. I think that this represents the end of all that high talk of art and creation and a gaming revolution that floated around the launch of Xbox1 from Seamus and his colleagues.

    What does Microsoft have now? Halo and Fable? Halo 2 will be Halo, but not as repetitive. Fable? Based on the hands-on previews that have been surfacing, it might be fun but really is, at heart, a traditional European adventure/RPG. Whoopie. Psychonauts was the one creative spark Microsoft seemed to have left in it, and that is now extinguished.

    Well, I'm turning in my Microsoft fanboy card. In fact, I'm selling my video gaming fanboy card on ebay at a Buy It Now price of $10.36 so can I buy Hickee which, I'm told, is drawn by some of the Double Fine Team. This industry blows its official licensed and franchised chunks and it got all over my damn shirt. If games like REZ and ICO and Beyond Good and Evil and Prince of Persia don't sell, and games like Sam and Max and Psychonauts don't even see the light of day, consider me officialy disfranchised.

    Screw this joint. I'm picking up books. Or gardening. I hear gardening is fun.

    You can't hide from the Grim Reaper. Especially when he's got a gun. - Manuel Calavera, Grim Fandango

    1. Re:Want my card? by DeadScreenSky · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Just wanted to point out that the newest Prince of Persia sold really well. It just took a while to build sales momentum. Its 'sales death' has been greatly exaggerated.

      (And in my opinion, Beyond Good and Evil didn't deserve to sell all much more than it did. I want the other half, or more, of the storyline that for some reason wasn't in the game. Hell, I would just be happy if I could get a good story period, like most reviewers claimed it had.)

      --
      There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -- Francis Bacon
  2. Let's hope this means it'll be ported elsewhere by oskillator · · Score: 2, Insightful
    I was afraid I'd have to buy an X-Box to play the game developed by two of my heroes, Tim Schafer (of LucasArts) and Erik Wolpaw (of Old Man Murray). Now? Now, I have hope.

    I also have hope that Erik will be writing more updates for the DoubleFine news page.

  3. Re:Hmmm... by Black+Hitler · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Supposedly the graphics, story and dialogue are there but the actual gameplay isn't coming along too well. After all this time and money I imagine MS had pretty high expectations. Of course MS has been canning titles right and left over the past couple of weeks (Mythica, the Xbox sports lineup, the next Oddworld game) so there's definitely some internal politics involved as well.