Folks, brace yourself. The future of one of the finest racing videogame franchises is now in question.
Castaway, the co-developers of the Toyota-branded Xbox Live Arcade racing shooter Yaris, are now closing their doors. Develop says that the group has recently suffered the loss of a couple of projects, and they've since cut their staff from 25 down to six senior staff.
"If somebody came in tomorrow and said, 'Here's a whole bunch of money. Can you get back up and running,' then Monday we could be back up and running," said president Michael Scandizzo.
"It would have to be soon, but if anyone wanted to come in and save us, we'd give the whole kitchen sink to them on the extremely cheap," he added. "Otherwise after almost 10 years of this group working together, we're going to have to dissolve."
The studio was founded in 2003 by a group of ex-Blizzard Entertainment staff, and it seems that Yaris was their only release since then.
Who will make our terrible, advert-gaming racing titles now?
[Thanks, JR]
Contest:
11:01 AM on 04.07.2008
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But they've only been together for five years... If they're that bad with numbers it's no wonder they're going out of business. :p
Y'know, this is a topic for another day, perhaps, but has anyone else noticed how many tiny dev studios seemingly pop up out of nowhere and make a one's-ie or two'sie game, then just disappear? Actually, this is probably the main reason that although I like retro games, I don't usually pickup or play anything made in the last several since the names of these popup companies are so ridonkulously geeky or weird, and it just reeks of someone watching some sci-fi and going, "Oh! I'll make a great game company called, Thrusters at Max Power!, Inc." I mean, I encourage good indy game ideas to be made, but please don't pick your game company name whilst drunk. Thank you.
After that, it will be safe for me to LUL like a madman.