Months after being shut down by 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Microsoft, and having its staff laid off, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Evil Within and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Ghostwire: Tokyo developer Tango Gameworks has been 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:acquired by Krafton, with plans to bring back the staff and carry on business as usual. Krafton even purchased the rights to the studio's 2023 hit, Hi-Fi Rush, giving us hope for a sequel.
So a well-liked franchise that was by all appearances dead will likely be returning in the near future with the original team heading up development. This isn't the norm, but it should be.
Krafton is doing a good thing, but its record isn't spotless. The PUBG publisher , after The Callisto Protocol failed to meet sales expectations, and director Glen Schofield has recently struck out at Krafton, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:claiming they rushed its development. If future Hi-Fi Rush projects underperfor✃m, Tango could be on the chopping block again.
IP Often Takes Priority Over People
Usually when an iconic brand is brought back from the dead, it's a zombified version of itself. When LCG Entertainment resurrected Telltale Games, it brought back its branding and IP, but . In a sequel-obsessed industry, it's actually surprisingly uncommon when the original developer continues to steward a game as it becomes a franchise. Studios like NetherRealm, which has worked on the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Mortal Kombat IP for 32 years, are incredibly rare.
Video game rights can be complicated, so as studios change hands (as Tango is doing right now) the franchises they establish often stay with their old owners. Krafton's only states that the publisher has acquired the rights to Hi-Fi Rush, not Ghostwire or The Evil Within. Other developers may take a crack at making new games based on those IPs down the line.
Though it should be obvious, the games industry often acts as though developers don't contribute all that much to what makes a franchise tick. And yet, has anyone, post-168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Insomniac, made a Spyro game that matches the quality of the original trilogy? No. But, despite numerous flops since Spyro 3, the series is still seen as valuable property with💯out its original developers attach𝔉ed.
We've grown so accustomed to developers moving on, that we often see the teams working on a franchise as interchangeable, but the original team often has a special something that makes their games special compared to the entries that came after them. Just look at the Gears of War series, which hasn’t been the same since The Coalition took over from Epic Games, or Halo under 343 Industries rather than Bungie.
The big exception is when a developer isn't well-liked. Bloober Team's Silent Hill 2 remake would have much better buzz without a studio attached.
Developers Make The Games We Love, Like Hi-Fi Rush
It's easy to imagine a world where Krafton bought Hi-Fi Rush and left Tango's developers behind. Only a fraction of the audience who played Hi-Fi Rush even knows the name of the developer, anyway. But that's short term thinking. The same fraction of the audience who knows and cares about Tango — the fraction that would be the most fervent fans of a good new entry — would be upset if the developer they love was discarded while the IP was kept alive.
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Plus, the publisher is going to need to find a new developer at some point anyway. You could chuck the developer who’s proven their capability with this kind of game and find a new one… or you could just pay that developer to keep making the games. It's a simple way to cut out the middleman and not earn unforced bad will.
In the case of Hi-Fi Rush, this is just a mutually beneficial arrangement for Krafton. In its press release, Krafton said that purchasing Tango marked "an exciting moment in the company's global expansion and its first significant investment in the Japanese video game market." That makes sense. Hi-Fi Rush was critically and commercially successful and only the strange illogic of shareholder math led to Xbox shuttering the studio in the first place. It doesn't take a genius to understand why Krafton would be interested in diversifying its offerings by purchasing a successful Japanese company.
I only hope that this logic becomes more widespread. Let's see a publisher pick up 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Arkane Austin and finance a new immersive sim. Why not resuscitate Pieces Interactive and have the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Alone in the Dark team build on the things that worked about that game for a new survival horror title? I bet Volition could make a great open-world game if it wasn't trying to recapture that 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Saints Row magic.
Most developers will tell you that they don't know how to make a game until they're almost done making it. For a smart publisher, bringing back shuttered teams to make games that are similar to the ones they've made before seems like a safer bet than trying to make lightning strike twice with a less experienced developer.
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