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The Duke Is Finally Back, For Real
After the first announcement on 1997-04-27 and over eleven years of fresh start after fresh start, Duke Nukem Forever finally comes to your system. At least if your system is an Xbox 360. Jon Siegler, the webmaster of 3D Realms, confirms this on their site: "As has been reported around the net today, we can confirm that the game has indeed passed final certification with Microsoft on Friday the 15th of August (on our first try, no less). That means the game is done — it is now in the hands of Microsoft." Update: 08/19 10:47 GMT by T : Several readers have written with a correction: this announcement is actually about Duke Nukem 3D, rather than Duke Nukem Forever.
An article of this magnitude (well it isn't but if it were true...) and the least the editor could've done is hover his mouse cursor over the link. Also this is old news (DN3D coming to XBLA).
Bad to the point of me thinking the editors might as well just pull this entire posting. Except that'd be too easy on them, I guess. Seriously, though - RTFA, anyone?
No, /. editors not checking the actually story is not a sign of the Apocalypse.
It's more on the scale of "a sign that /. is not a real news source".
TC - My Photos..
doesn't RTFA
fps, badsummary, wrongsummary, !dukenukemforever, kdawsonsucks (tagging beta)
Best. Tags. Ever.
As a practical matter it isn't real likely that DNF would come out now, not just because of it's vaporware status but because it is, yet again, time for another engine change. DNF was being developed on a modified Unreal Engine 2. Ok, no problem... Except that Unreal Engine 3 is out. Not only is it out, there are a bunch of first flight games using it. Bio Shock, Mass Effect, UT3, Rainbow 6 Vegas, this is what people expect new, top of the line shooters to look like. So if they release with a game based on the old engine, well it isn't likely to do so well, especially given all the buildup. Thus they'll need to license UE 3, and then they'll be conversion work for that.
However I suspect what is happening is money is starting to run out. A number of products that they were publishing/producing got transferred to other companies, which suggests they don't have the funds to keep development going. Duke 3D being one of their only properties around, they seem to be trying for another release to get some more cash.
I can't say I'm all that surprised, they have done basically nothing as a developer for over a decade, and not a whole lot as a publisher (most of their stuff published this decade are Duke rehashes for various platforms). It can't be cheap to continue working on this game that's never getting released. Compounding that is licensing cost for buying new game engines all the time. 3D engines from companies like Epic and iD are not cheap, and even less so when it is the top of the line engine. They've thus far bought 3 of them (Quake 2, UE 1 and UE 2) and that is going to hit the bottom line.
Personally, I think they'll go bankrupt before they ever actually get DNF out. Most likely the property will be sold to another studio. Who knows what will come of it? At this point, I just don't see them as being able to get together the money to finish it, even if they did actually stop screwing around and work on getting it out.
I'm wondering if maybe Hurricane78 is a console gamer, and therefore has no knowledge of FPS games on the PC. It's possible people would read "Duke Nukem 3D" and assume it must be the "Forever" game, because that's the only Duke Nukem they're aware of.
After all, generic common-as-muck shooters such as the Halo franchise and Gears of War are elevated to Godlike status by console gamers, and I can only presume it's because they've never actually played shooters before that didn't suck. As far as decent shooters go, consoles don't really have much of a history. There's Goldeneye 007 on the N64, but not much else.
Point being, if you'd never heard of DN3D then you might mistake this announcement as being the final name of the "Duke Nukem Forever" project, in the way that Longhorn became Vista. So maybe that explains the journal entry. kdawson's contribution can be explained by his or her general uselessness as an editor.
At this point the burden of proof is on YOU, my friend. We're not the ones with a decade of bullshit promises that we've never delivered on.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.