FASA Studios Now Out of Business

PhoenixOne writes "Another chapter in the long and sometimes-frustrating history of the name 'FASA' comes to a close today, as Microsoft's FASA Studio has closed its doors. 'It is my sad duty to announce that FASA Studio has officially closed its doors. Today was the official last day of employment for those of us who had not moved on to other positions within Microsoft Game Studios. While the rumors have been circulating forever, we chose to wait on an official announcement because we didn't want people's attention distracted from our last product, Shadowrun, a game we love.'"

Re:Big Deal

[TriezGamer]

Which is called a FAFSA, not a FASA. I just had to fill one out about 2 months ago.

Though, I must admit, having just gone through several loan documents, I read it as FAFSA at first.

Re:Not Surprising

[Robotech_Master]

Someone has. [sourceforge.net]

Re:Not Surprising

[Thirdlight]

Actually there was a pretty neat game called titans of steel that was pretty close to the original board game... http://www.matrixgames.com/games/TitansofSteel2/ [matrixgames.com]

Re:Not Surprising

[Chas]

FASA may be gone. FanPro may be gone. But BattleTech and Shadowrun live on.

All the primary developers for CBT and SR for the past 7-ish years are now at Catalyst Game Labs [catalystgamelabs.com] And, already, they've released around half a dozen new products in the last 4 months.

As Robotech Master pointed out, there's still MegaMek [sourceforge.net].

Heck, if you want a taste of old-school FASA Interactive, there's even an approved copy of the sub-rosa PC BattleTech [mektek.net] that JUST became available (thanks to Virtual World and Microsoft).

If you're looking for fiction you have BattleCorps [battlecorps.com] and, eventually, Holostreets [holostreets.com].

That and the Classic BattleTech [classicbattletech.com] and Shadowrun [dumpshock.com] communities [shadowrun4.com] have been alive and bustling for the better part of a decade now.

Re:This isn't really FASA dying...

[Chas]

Ripped off?

As I know people who worked at FASA, FASA Interactive, and FASA Studios, I beg to differ.

Take a look at the people who worked at FASA Studio when Microsoft assumed control of FASA Interactive.

No ripoff there.

As for MW3, it's was a "meh" last-minute slot-in.

MW4 was a conversion of the Virtual World code, begun at FASA Interactive when they and Virtual World Entertainment were occupying the same offices (I've even see the early conversions of RedPlanet).

Unfortunately, FASA Interactive had never released product before. So when the time came to choose between putting out MW3 with the Virtual World code or putting out MechCommander, MechCommander was far closer to being finished.

So MechWarrior3 was farmed out to Zipper Interactive, and the "Git 'er done" was what emerged.

And while MW4 was not a good representation of a mech from a construction POV, it was a decent sim, considering that it's forebearer VWE BattleTech) was designed to run on a custom graphics system with multiple multi-function displays (think Flight Simulator on steroids).

This is sad, but...

[scottneelan]

The incarnation of FASA that just died didn't even own the rights to Battletech, Mechwarrior, or Shadowrun (or Crimson Skies for that matter). Jordan Weisman kept the rights when he sold FASA Interactive to Microsoft, and when he founded WizKids they ended up with ownership. The properties were leased to FASA Studios and FanPro. All in all, this is probably a good thing. As long as WK can be convinced there's a market for Mechwarrior and Shadowrun video games, they'd most likely be very willing to find a new company to lease the rights to.