When I went to E3, one of the games I went out of my way to go see was Stargate SG-1: The Alliance. Those people who saw my gallery of E3 photos also saw a number of pics from the JoWooD booth, including a life-size Stargate. (Damn, those things are huge!) Well, this is what I happened to see when checking GameSpot News this evening…
http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/08/05/news_6130425.html
Austrian publisher JoWood has terminated its contract with Perception, the Australian studio that was, until now, developing Stargate SG-1: The Alliance. As per the contract, all rights to the game, as well as the developed source code, have transferred to JoWood’s possession. Namco was originally slated to release the action game to the Xbox, PlayStation 2, and PC in North America this fall.
In the announcement, JoWood CEO Albert Seidl designated the game’s quality as the primary issue that led to the contract’s termination. Apparently, JoWood did not believe that Perception could produce a game that would both satisfy fans of the series and arrive on time. “In recent months we have invested a lot of time and resources in helping Perception finish the development, but we now simply have lost confidence in their ability to finish this project in time and sufficient quality,” Seidl said.
Executive producer Michael Paeck stated that the future of the Stargate SG-1 is largely up in the air and that the company has to determine if it is economically viable to finish production before trying to find another developer. Interestingly, Paeck also said that one of the options in front of the publisher is to move development of the game to next-gen consoles.
To be honest, I wish I could say I was surprised. While the demo they had of the PC version seemed to run reasonably well, the console versions were of fairly poor quality. I only hope they don’t decide to scrap it altogether, especially seeing as the plotline revolves around my favorite of the Goa’uld…. namely, Anubis.
*sigh* Oh, well…