Company News Interplay thinks it's got a chance

[Saint_Proverbius]

Tags: Interplay

<A href="http://www.interplay.com">Interplay</a> has recently <A href="http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/031218/deth023_1.html">released some PR news</a> to shareholders about how great they'll be doing, while making excuses for not anti-great they've done. Here's a clip:
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<blockquote>"2003 has been a challenging period for the company. A down economy, a difficult legal dispute with our North American distributor, and the adventures always associated with being a game developer and publisher all presented obstacles for management and staff.
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"Yet, our trend toward profitability is strong. Our sustained focus on cost control continues to improve our balance sheet position, while strategic sales of certain intellectual properties and development of key franchise titles drive our revenue. We also purchased certain gaming rights, extended the contracts on others, and re-energized some familiar Interplay brands.</blockquote>
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Okay, first off, the <i>down economy</i> thing might have worked at the beginning of the year, but as of now, we're in a upclimb on the economy. Retail spending has been up most of the year, <A href="http://retailindustry.about.com/library/holiday/blholidayspending03.htm">been up recently too</a>, and games are retail, minions of <b>Lord Caen</b>.
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Your trend towards profitability is much like a like a brain tumor's trend towards healthy cell mass. After all, you've <A href="http://biz.yahoo.com/e/031114/iply.ob10-q.html">lost more this year than last</a>.
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Lastly, your re-energizing familiar brand names.. Well, we all know about the cancelling of <b>Fallout 3</b> and <b>Baldur's Gate 3</b>, don't we? That's got me feeling energized, I must say.
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Oh yeah, and you have to love the random letters used to generate the web page for this PR bit. Just mouse over <A href="http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/031218/deth023_1.html">the article's URL</a>. It seems even the cosmos is against you now.
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[Sheriff05]

<A href="http://www.interplay.com">Interplay</a> has recently <A href="http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/031218/deth023_1.html">released some PR news</a> to shareholders about how great they'll be doing, while making excuses for not anti-great they've done. Here's a clip:

<blockquote>"2003 has been a challenging period for the company. A down economy, a difficult legal dispute with our North American distributor, and the adventures always associated with being a game developer and publisher all presented obstacles for management and staff.

"Yet, our trend toward profitability is strong. Our sustained focus on cost control continues to improve our balance sheet position, while strategic sales of certain intellectual properties and development of key franchise titles drive our revenue. We also purchased certain gaming rights, extended the contracts on others, and re-energized some familiar Interplay brands.</blockquote>

Okay, first off, the <i>down economy</i> thing might have worked at the beginning of the year, but as of now, we're in a upclimb on the economy. Retail spending has been up most of the year, <A href="http://retailindustry.about.com/library/holiday/blholidayspending03.htm">been up recently too</a>, and games are retail, minions of <b>Lord Caen</b>.

Your trend towards profitability is much like a like a brain tumor's trend towards healthy cell mass. After all, you've <A href="http://biz.yahoo.com/e/031114/iply.ob10-q.html">lost more this year than last</a>.

Lastly, your re-energizing familiar brand names.. Well, we all know about the cancelling of <b>Fallout 3</b> and <b>Baldur's Gate 3</b>, don't we? That's got me feeling energized, I must say.

Oh yeah, and you have to love the random letters used to generate the web page for this PR bit. Just mouse over <A href="http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/031218/deth023_1.html">the article's URL</a>. It seems even the cosmos is against you now.

Saint, humor me here
when you say Baldur's gate 3, are you refering to the canceled JE Sawyer Project?
(which I didn't think *was* a BG game) or some other atrocity?

Economy wise, check out this article

Here

While the GDP is up for the last quarter, Xmas are *slow* in comparsion with years past
and regardless of optimistic reports employment is still close to 6% which is historically very bad in a wartime ecomony, IMO this is more so a direct result in the low US dollar internationally and our insane deficit than anything else.

regardless of this you're right that Interplay has NO EXCUSES, they are morons-

 

[Psilon]

Yeah, "Project Jefferson" was BG3, or else Baldur's Gate: The Subtitle.

Note that its indefinite hiatus coincided nicely with Interplay losing the Baldur's Gate hiatus. Let us also not forget EB's screwup putting Baldur's Gate 3 in the public product database.

So while it wasn't nearly as official as even Fallout 3, it's a pretty safe assumption.

 

[Sheriff05]

Note that its indefinite hiatus coincided nicely with Interplay losing the Baldur's Gate hiatus. Let us also not forget EB's screwup putting Baldur's Gate 3 in the public product database.

Funny, I had totally forgotten about that, I now remember minions on the Bio boards
posting "Look Baldur's Gate 3! Wheeee"-

 

[Draikin]

So while it wasn't nearly as official as even Fallout 3, it's a pretty safe assumption."

unlike FO3, BG3: the Black Hound has been demoed outside of Interplay.

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

2003 has been a challenging period for the company. A down economy, a difficult legal dispute with our North American distributor, and the adventures always associated with being a game developer and publisher all presented obstacles for management and staff.

Such as our brave heroes losing against the dreaded Dragons of Greed and Stupidity.

 

[Sammael]

unlike FO3, BG3: the Black Hound has been demoed outside of Interplay.

Not entirely true. It was IPLY's stupidity that lost the PC license in the first place.

 

[Sharpice]

When economy is in bad shape, thing like games that people can live without, become harder to sell. It is more sensible to make game for casual gamer instead of hard core gamer, and console instead of pc. The cancel of Fallout 3 project was not a surprise.
Since Fallout was a rather hard core game in story background, and playing style.

The problem is many game company seem to get an idea that a game for casual gamer should be childish and mindless, hence the all mighty Fallout BOS. (Personally I think this game will probably do better without the "Fallout" branding)

I was hoping that KotOR (It is one of the few games that hared core player won't hate it and casusl player can enjoy it.) could inspire game companies like Interplay to understand that it is possible to make a game appeal to both casual and hardcore gamer without reduce it to a mindless hack'n slash, babes'n guns game.

We can only hope they can learn from their failure, since one is probably coming soon.

 

[DrattedTin]

I disagree.

Hardcore gamers ALWAYS buy the hardcore games.

Casual gamers are more likely to pass up even casual games.

 

[Sol Invictus]

Random trivia:
Project Jefferson better known as Baldur's Gate 3: The Black Hound was more closely related to Icewind Dale than it was to the Baldur's Gate series though tie ins with various 'happenings' in the BG world existed. One of the most pivotal characters to BG3: TBH was the niece of the Gnomish inventor guy from Icewind Dale and Icewind Dale II of which she was in as a small child. She was the narrator of IWD2 (or rather, Jennifer Hale was, voicing her).

That said, IPLY screwed it up. It had nothing to do with the sluggish economy.

 

[Otaku_Hanzo]

Didn't Jennifer also do the voice of Imoen from the first two BGs as well as Tandi from FO1?

 

[Greenskin13]

Didn't Jennifer also do the voice of Imoen from the first two BGs as well as Tandi from FO1?

Cree Summer did Tandi for both Fallouts. IMDB also does video games, so you can always get voice actors from them:

http://imdb.com/title/tt0134648/

 

[Ausir]

Nope. She did Tandi in FO1, and Lynette in FO2. Tandi in FO2 was Tress MacNeille (she was also Jain in FO1).