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Studios Rise And Fall 19

Posted by Zonk from the harsh-world dept.
The fortunes of game studios are fickle. Gamasutra reports that former Blizzard developers have formed another studio. This time, vets from Blizzard North have congealed Hyboreal Games. Their first title is slated to be a PC game entitled 'Starfall'. Meanwhile, ShaggusMacHaggis writes "Stainless Steel Studios, developers of Empire Earth, Empires, and the yet to be released Rise & Fall, have shut their doors. Despite the game being 'almost gold', Midway wanted the game held back from an October 05 release date, instead being released in Feb 06. The catch was that Midway did not want to pay Stainless Steel Studios for this delayed time period."
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Studios Rise And Fall

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  • Like many other gamers I'll be keeping a very close eye on this studio given how great Diablo II was.

    Unfortunately, past experience has shown that great games are frequently 1-off flukes. When I first played Lemmings I thought a great new era of gaming had arrived... Now I couldn't even tell you what the guy who wrote it is doing currently.

    Anyone know any details about Starfall yet ? (Apart from the fact it has a really weak name which is hard to Google for !)
  • of not terribly well balanced games. Empire Earth was a game I really wanted to enjoy. An Age of Empires game that spanned a huge time frame from the beginning of Civilization all the way to a mech laden future. Sounds great. Didn't play that great.
    Empires: Dawn of the Modern World was a pretty fun game but in my opinion really unbalanced. The national differences were quite large which is good in that the nations didn't feel entirely cookie cutter, but bad in that some nations had serious advantages. The U

  • Tactics (Score:5, Informative)

    by Red Flayer ( 890720 ) on Tuesday November 29, 2005 @03:18PM (#14140649) Journal
    A former Stainless staffer gives the info... they've shut their doors due to lack of cash. Summary implies Midway pushed the release date, article doesn't say that.

    Anyway, once Midway realizes they are 'losing' bundles more by not releasing than the cash advances would cost them, they'll pony up and the game will go back into production.

    Or, they'll sell the IP to help offset their losses, and another dev house will take over, hiring many of the people who were working on it under SS.

    I suspect that SS is playing the only card they have left, which is to halt production until they get payments.

    Midway is not exactly doing well right now, and they can't afford to lose a potentially big revenue stream next year... even if it widens their cash gap this quarter. Funny though, their market cap has tripled over the past six months.

    Maybe they'll restart in January, so management can keep this quarter's financials looking not terrible.

    • Re:Tactics (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Stainless tried to play that card, and Midway balked, so the company is no more. Unfortunately without money and the support of the publisher a developer simply cannot continue to exist, if it were plausible to "work a few more weeks for no pay" I'm sure that would have been explored. Unfortunately it isn't, and wasn't. There is 0% chance of SSSI reforming, sadly. Hopefully Midway will find someone else to finish up the development of RAF, but who knows how reliable that system will be (have fun learning th
      • a real shame though since it looked like a really good game. I'm rarely excited about games but this is up there with Oblivion on my anticipated list.
      • "Hopefully Midway will find someone else to finish up the development of RAF, but who knows how reliable that system will be (have fun learning the code).

        -a former sssi staffer"

        Why? What did you do to it before you left? :)

    • Re:Tactics (Score:3, Informative)

      by ShaggusMacHaggis ( 178339 )
      yeah, the link i submitted for the accepted article was NOT the gamespot article, it was a link to the rise and fall forums where several ex sssi'ers have been posting (and more info is provided). Not sure why it was changed. Anyway - Midway came right out in their quarterly report and said something to the effect that they felt the market was too crowded (with AOE3 + Civ 4), so they wanted to delay the release of R&F. I was looking forward to the hero mode of R&F. Oh well.

      Here is a link to the

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