Panic struck the hearts of LittleBigPlanet fans around the net this weekend, as there have been reports that Siobhan Reddy, studio director of Media Molecule, said that the group was “stepping away” from the franchise for a time to focus on new ideas. Naturally, game sites reported this news (which originated from a single tweet) as gospel, but since then there have been updates from Media Molecule which clarify that they are not leaving LBP forever, merely putting it in the backseat temporarily while they break ground on new developments.
All of this is most certainly welcome news (I’ll be happy with anything that MM puts out in the future), it did spring a new question to life that I thought I’d ask you guys. It’s well known these days that game devs’ hands are tied to their popular franchises, which is why we see sequel after nonstop sequel each year. It almost makes me wish that more studios had the freedom to step away like this. I would love to see what Naughty Dog could do besides Uncharted, and I certainly can’t wait to see what Bungie does with its new-found life after Halo.
So now I ask you gents: which devs would you like to see step away from their current hit franchises? What kind of games would you like to see them create? Go!
Source – LittleBigLand
I’d love to see Dice either give Mirror’s Edge another go, even as a spiritual successor, or else do something completely different to Battlefield. Well, I SAY completely different, but I’d just love to see them deconstruct the shooter genre since they already have it nailed.
Hideo Kojima could grace us with a whole new game series. MGS and ZoE are excellent (I’m going by word of mouth on ZoE though, HD remake Konami?). But I suppose he can’t as he’ll just be bombarded with death threats. It’s a shame he can’t really move on from MGS because, as much as I love it, I’m sure Hideo Kojima would rather make something else.
I’d like to see Naughty Dog’s other ideas too Eddy. But if that’s left until the NEXT gen I’ll be happy enough. Jak and Daxter was all on PS2 so it seems natural that Uncharted is all on PS3 and their future projects push the PS4 to its limit. Having said that, my friend and I are hoping Jak 4 crops up somewhere…
Naughty Dog would go back to Crash Bandicoot if they stepped back, and that would be awesome. =D
@Julez: relevant – http://i.imgur.com/ZHnyV.jpg
Like Scuba said, a new ZoE game would be awesome. I’d love to see what new IPs Blizzard and Infinity Ward could come up with. Blizzard does have a good track record, but IW is very much a one-trick pony.
I guess that Respawn Entertainment will produce the game that IW would have made if they weren’t shackled to CoD.
Not really getting away from franchises but 2 things came to mind.
Could you imagine if Valve put their considerable story-telling talents and were able to bring it to an open world game a la Elder Scrolls or GTA?
Or perhaps more terrifying, what if Popcap were able to create an RPG or FPS or basically any other sort of game that appealed to a “hardcore” audience, but retained the addictive nature of any of their other games (Peggle, Bejewelled, Plants vs Zombies etc)?