Starcraft Ghost Off The Cube

Gamespot has the news that Blizzard's upcoming action/stealth title Starcraft: Ghost is officially no longer in production for the Gamecube. From the article: "Speaking to GameSpot, a Blizzard staffer confirmed that the game is now only being released for the Xbox and PlayStation 2, meaning the previously announced GameCube edition has been canceled ... Unfortunately the GameCube has no online service and since so much work is going in to the online portion, it would be additional work to release only part of the intended game."

Comments

This is an understandable move.

[Rowan_u]

When Ghost was in early development the focus was on the single player experience. Now, with the information and playable versions released at Blizcon, it seems that the game is shaping up to have a considerable multiplayer portion. In light of this new focus, it makes sense to drop costly support for the Gamecube version.

If you look at the PS2 version of the game, I'm sure this already requires extensive extra work to the multiplayer portion as well. Its going to be a big difference between putting a game up on Xbox live, and creating a complete multiplayer service like you have to do with PS2 online games.

I wonder if the Ps2 version will contain features like matchmaking, buddy lists, and playlists. With Blizzards previous excellent multiplayer track record on battlenet, it seems unlikely they would expect anything less from developers taken under there wing. Could such extensive online support be the killer-app for the PS2 Ethernet adapter?

Re:This is an understandable move.

[RogueyWon]

And how many games make use of it? How many consumers are likely to own one? How does the market penetration compare to X-Box Live and the PS2's online services?

While it's technically wrong to say that the Cube has no online services, in any serious business decision, you cannot include the Cube's network adaptor as a factor. It's sold far too few and it's not going to start selling them now, so late in the cycle.

Blizzard's decision makes perfect sense and I doubt most people outside of slashdot games will even notice.

Re:This is an understandable move.

[valintin]

There is far more consoles that do not have online than there are that do. It makes perfect sense to sell more games to more users to make more money. If the game was any good they would come out with a robust single player to sell to the majority of console users. This shows their lack of confidence in the game over all and in the single player mode.

The single player mode is not good enough to sell the game to enough Gamecube owners to make it profitable for that platform. That says much about the game for any console owner.

OH NOES!

[Inoshiro]

Considering when it was announced years ago, you have to wonder a bit. Does this matter? It's like saying that Duke Nukem Forever won't come out on the GameCube -- it's sure as shit not coming out on anything else, either!

After 3 years, it's not going to live up to expectations anyways. The edge of gameplay is further out, and whatever monetary hit they took developing a game in 2002 and 2003 is 100% wasted money. Some of the code and art may transfer, but the gameplay and graphics standard have been raised in the meantime. Anything over 18 months is wasted money in game development.

PS2 has no online service either

[MayonakaHa]

So why are they dropping it just for the GameCube? By their logic they should be dropping the PS2 version also since all it has is an internet adapter. X-Box is the only console with an online service.

So, let's see here...

[Txiasaeia]

...Ghost was announced in 2001 as being developed by Nihilistic Software. Then it changed hands from Nihilistic to Swingin' Ape Studios. Nihilistic had completed 85% of the engine and 40% of level design, but Ape scrapped most of this (according to an interview earlier this year) in favour of a new engine(?) and entirely different story. Now they've changed it to a PS2 and XBox-title only, and four years after production began, they're shifting the focus from single-player to multi-player. I'm taking bets that the game is going to merge productions with Duke Nukem Forever, and the resulting unholy union will only be playable on the Infinium Labs Phantom.