Fri Sep 19, 2003 4:24 pm
As much as it pains me to say it, I'm going to have to agree that there is little to no chance that Freelancer will see any kind of official expansion or sequel. The circumstances surrounding the release of Freelancer seem to be the source of the trouble.
As far as I understand it, the original game suffered some major setbacks during its design and in the end a forced deadline prevented many features from getting incorporated into the game. Ultimately what happened was the game was shipped before it was REALLY done. The final product was not what the designers fully envisioned. Also, correct if I'm wrong, but Microsoft was so eager to get the product out the door (basically so they could stop spending money to develop it), the mareketing wasn't as good as it could have been and although the game saw some decent sales at the start, it pretty much fizzled out, from a business perspective.
I think the final verdict from Microsoft is that the original product took too long, wasn't fully completed and didn't sell enough to warrent putting the same time and effort into a sequel or expansion. I'm willing to bet that Microsoft will let this sleeping dog lie.
Again, I hope I'm wrong, but I'd bet real money on us never seeing anything official for Freelancer ever again. Well, at least not anytime in the next 4 or 5 years.
It's up to the mod community now...UNLESS another company buys the rights from Microsoft and decides to take the francise further. Maybe we should start a petition to another game company and encourage them to buy the rights, produce a sequel and sell a billion copies!
Now THERE'S an idea...
Wap
As far as I understand it, the original game suffered some major setbacks during its design and in the end a forced deadline prevented many features from getting incorporated into the game. Ultimately what happened was the game was shipped before it was REALLY done. The final product was not what the designers fully envisioned. Also, correct if I'm wrong, but Microsoft was so eager to get the product out the door (basically so they could stop spending money to develop it), the mareketing wasn't as good as it could have been and although the game saw some decent sales at the start, it pretty much fizzled out, from a business perspective.
I think the final verdict from Microsoft is that the original product took too long, wasn't fully completed and didn't sell enough to warrent putting the same time and effort into a sequel or expansion. I'm willing to bet that Microsoft will let this sleeping dog lie.
Again, I hope I'm wrong, but I'd bet real money on us never seeing anything official for Freelancer ever again. Well, at least not anytime in the next 4 or 5 years.
It's up to the mod community now...UNLESS another company buys the rights from Microsoft and decides to take the francise further. Maybe we should start a petition to another game company and encourage them to buy the rights, produce a sequel and sell a billion copies!
Now THERE'S an idea...
Wap
