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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 9889408" data-attributes="member: 18">I mean you've summed up pretty well why SR hasn't done great despite potentially being an IP which was extremely well positioned.It really comes down to two things:Catalyst and Microsoft.Catalyst have handled the property very badly, and had a lot of very bad ideas and poorly-implemented ideas, and seem to have been perhaps overfocused on maintaining what they saw as existing markets rather than developing a game more people might want to play. Like, I get that SR was "big in Germany", but guys that doesn't mean SR had to stay only "big in Germany". Yet it seems Catalyst can't really think beyond that.Microsoft have simply sat on the IP for well over a decade. They made one game, which was weird and before-its-time gameplay-wise, and still fondly remembered, then completely and totally gave up. I guess at least they didn't vault the IP like EA or some others would, they let Harebrained licence it out, but I strongly suspect the reason we're not seeing more SR stuff from Harebrained, despite the SR games doing well and a modern SR game likely to do better, is that MS probably has some pretty unreasonable terms for use the licence now. Unfortunately the licence was sold in the '00s era of perpetual licence sales so unless MS changes its mind on this, we'll probably never see an SR game again. Particularly now MS seem to have started penny-pinching their games department and have abandoned exclusives. MS also doesn't seem to be doing any "joined up" thinking re: the companies they own, for better or worse. They're just sort of acting like each company (Blizzard, Bethesda, Obsidian, etc.) can sink or swim on its own, and don't seem to be helping (or hindering) them or getting them to work together or providing access to existing MS IPs or anything. I can't say that's purely bad but... it seems like it might be creating a lot of miss opportunities and slightly sub-par games (at least from Bethesda and Obsidian). They're also shutting down a lot of smaller MS-owned studios because they didn't make enough money despite making critically acclaimed games, which seems... short-sighted.</blockquote>

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