What the heck happened to that Dev?

[DustyDrB]

Hey, a pre-Microsoft Rare shoutout!

I'd have to go with them as well, as they made my (and I'm saying this a lot around here lately) favorite platformer ever: Donkey Kong 64. I'm not too much of a fan of their output this generation (Nuts and Bolts is just ok)

 

[Sarmos]

OT: What happened to SonicTeam?

To put it simply, they tried too hard. Plus also lost alot of people that made Sonic good to other giant corp's like Square Nix and such.

 

[AWC Viper]

I remember Pandemic and being kinda sad when they closed. Seeing as Mecenaries was one of my favorites back in my PS2 days. Oh those North Korens and their devious want to take over the world.........

This.

 

[Irridium]

Pandemic, you will me missed. Mercenaries, Destroy all Humans, Star Wars: Battlefront...

You deserved better.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Oddworld Inhabitants.

I heard they were working on...something, but that was like 3 years ago. They seem to have completely vanished from the industry.

 

[Falko]

Infinity Ward. I love COD4. It's my fave in the series. Then MW2 came along...
I think what happened is Infinity Ward, after the success of COD4, realized that they could turn out any crap and it would be successful.

 

[xmbts]

My favorite developer is Naughty Dog, I think they're still going pretty strong though. I haven't played the uncharted games.

 

[vrbtny]

Activision. They used to be cool dammit!

Activision was awesome before Satan took control of it

Damn you, Bobby Kotick....

 

[YouBecame]

What the hell happened to Looking Glass. System Shock 3 would have been perfect.

Oh and Barking Dog Studios: Please come back and make Homeworld 3 already!

 

[Gahars]

Oh god yes. Free Radical.

For those of you who don't know, they made the awesome Timesplitters games and the criminally underrated Second Sight. While I'm not a huge fan of the original, 2 was basically my childhood (I played it for years) and the third, Future Perfect, is one of my favorite games of all time.

Then they decided to make something new, a PS3 exclusive that would push all the boundaries. It was called Haze.

It bombed so horribly that most of the company was shut down, and what remained of it has been purchased by Crytek and turned into Crytek UK, with many of their future game projects (Timesplitters 4 being the biggest) up in limbo. Now no one really knows what's going to happen with them.

Alas, poor Free Radical, we hardly knew ye.

 

[Critical_Sneeze]

I was so looking forward to Dungeon Keeper 3... it took me years to realise I wasn't getting it.

 

[NeoShai]

Oh god yes. Free Radical.

For those of you who don't know, they made the awesome Timesplitters games and the criminally underrated Second Sight. While I'm not a huge fan of the original, 2 was basically my childhood (I played it for years) and the third, Future Perfect, is one of my favorite games of all time.

Then they decided to make something new, a PS3 exclusive that would push all the boundaries. It was called Haze.

It bombed so horribly that most of the company was shut down, and what remained of it has been purchased by Crytek and turned into Crytek UK, with many of their future game projects (Timesplitters 4 being the biggest) up in limbo. Now no one really knows what's going to happen with them.

Alas, poor Free Radical, we hardly knew ye.

Oh god, same. Second Sight and Timesplitters 2 was the definition of my childhood. It's a shame we'll never get a number 4.

 

[Cogwheel]

Since nothing else comes to mind, Square Enix. Or Square, really - I've yet to come across a game of theirs that I like, since the merger. KH is okayish, I guess (matter of personal taste, I know many think it's great, not condemning it), and I never really got into FF10 in the least. Don't own either, though. Just borrowed them.

Old Square, though? FF6, FF7 (it may be overhyped, but I still liked it a fair bit), FF9 (one of my favourite JRPGs ever), Treasure of the Rudras - I'm quite aware that no one knows about this one, thank you very much - Chrono Trigger, and Secret of Mana/SD3. Variations on the theme of awesome, but... since then? Haven't really seen many that I like.

And then there are devs like Shiny (Sacrifice, not their other stuff), Quintet (Terranigma), and a bunch of others. Haven't seen games from them in ages. Of course, I know exactly what happened to those. They went down.

 

[baddude1337]

Free Radical and Pandemic are the two that come to mind.

Free radical made the amazing Timesplitters series and Second Sight which was a really unique and awesome game. Then they made Haze, and now they don't exist.

Pandemic made some great games. Some of my favorites being Battlezone 2(highly underrated game with some amazing mods), Dark Reign 2, Army Men RTS, Battlefront 2 and the first mercenaries (still probably my favorite sandbox game ever.) Then along came that piece of shit Lord of the Rings Conquest, which was totally horrible, and now their closed.


I will probably get hated for saying this, but Valve is also up there. It annoys me they seem to have totally dropped the series that made them great and instead are focusing on the Left 4 Dead series (which has gotten boring VERY quickly) and Portal (it was OKAY, it's not as amazing as people say it is IMHO).

 

[Leftnt Sharpe]

I'm just going to come out and say it.............Bioware. Despite being a massive Bioware fanboy I have to agree with a fellow forum member who said that 'Bioware has gone downhill in every area apart from technology since Baldur's Gate 2' or something to that effect. Its not that I dislike the stuff Bioware have made since, its just that for me personally none of it quite compares to BG2.