Psychonauts Parts Ways With Microsoft 29
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.
Hmmm... (Score:3, Interesting)
Probably not the game, but timing ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Something incredibly similar happened to Boss Game Studios and a phenomenal racing game they had scheduled for the LAUNCH of the Xbox. It was a follow-up to the critically acclaimed "World Driver Championship" on Nintendo 64, but it never got released despite being 98% finished.
The problem is that Microsoft had Project Gotham Racing scheduled for Launch as well. Microsoft pushed back "Racer X", and pushed it back, and pushed it back
Eventually, the window of opportunity for what was a unique GT racer (including things like body kits
Unfortunately, it looks like history is going to repeat itself. For some reason, publishers won't release nearly finished games, and I can't figure out why, since it would be nearly all profit
Now I can hear some of you saying that if the game was any good, this wouldn't happen. I can tell you from first-hand experience that this is not always the case, and frequently couldn't be farther from the truth. This happens all over, and not just with the smaller development houses either. You just don't always hear about the cancellations. And when it happen inside major companies (first-parties like Nintendo, for example), sometimes those projects can be resurrected later (Majora's Mask on GameCube being a key example).