Volition, Inc.’s Jim Boone has told NowGamer that the developer would “commit murder” to do another FreeSpace title, but disappointing sales of the previous game and a risky market on console are holding it back.
“There is a group of people that would commit murder to do that game,” he says. “The biggest problem that we have is… oh man, that game is so beloved. I did a bunch of missions for both games and it’s so dear to my heart I can’t even tell you. The problem we had was FreeSpace 2 didn’t sell as well.
“Here’s my theory, but I readily admit that I’m not the most objective person on this right? My theory is this: The reason why we all think [the genre] died is because this was a time when Quake was out and it was very much about the mouse and keyboard. Before that, when we did Descent for example, it was perfectly common for people to have joysticks – we sold a lot of copies of Descent. It was around that time that the more modern FPS with mouse and keyboard came out, as opposed to just keyboard like Wolfenstein or something.
“So people just stopped getting joysticks. They were just gone. And then you still had console, but it was all digital – so my theory has been, ever since we’ve got analogue as a standard controller for consoles no one has done a heavy-duty, top, top quality space sim on console.”
He reckons there’s probably an “opportunity there” somewhere, though, but won’t commit to anything just for the moment.
