September 13th, 2007

Microsoft Signs Shadowrun Developer Demise

It’s a sad day for Shadowrun and Mechwarrior fans for yesterday FASA Interactive manager Mitch Gitelman announced the official demise of the studio and termination of current activities. With most remaining game developers being absorbed into other Microsoft Game Studios teams, one can only wonder if FASA’s demise will take the Shadowrun with it. Gitelman assured players that: “As a testament to the team's commitment to Shadowrun, we released three title updates to improve the product even after the team learned we were losing our studio. We have kept our Community Manager and Technical Support Manager on the job to aid and support you and will continue to do so while people continue to play our game.”

Shadowrun is a first person shooter with role playing elements based in the cyberpunk reality of 2031 Brazil. The multiplayer mode resembles a squad based game with a twist. Before the round starts you can purchase, along with weaponry, Magic and Tech to augment your assault. Thus combos are less point and click oriented, hunting for a headshot, and more intense if you manage to plan ahead and chain your abilities. Shadowrun has great potential but managed be seriously overpriced while loading times and lag issues hindered solo and online play to a degree it became frustrating. Most of these were addressed in the August patch and I’m curious about the changes being made by last night’s fix. The funny thing is that sale figures weren’t that bad since the game made it into the top 5 Xbox sales. As with many recent Microsoft titles, the possibility of bringing PC gamers to meet console Xbox users in the same online game is one very advertised feature, which Shadowrun failed to deliver due to low Vista sales.

FASA Interactive emerged in 1998 as the developer of MechCommander and shortly after became a division of Microsoft Game Studios. The Redmond based studio was actually a few miles away from the Microsoft main campus. After the purchase their job was to create exclusive Xbox and PC games and Mechwarrior 4: Vengeance, Mechwarrior: Mercenaries, Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge emerged in the following years. With the release of Shadowrun, earlier this year, rumors about the studio’s impending doom surfaced the net as a decision from high above. It seems many FASA Interactive employees leaked away from the studio in what at that time was called a veritable exodus. Maybe the answer lies in the marketing decision to keep Shadowrun available only on Xbox and Vista, narrowing its reach considerably since Vista has limited backwards compatibility. You should also consider the fact that Razor 1911 hacked the game only to discover that Shadowrun checks for the Windows version at install without utilizing any of its DirectX 10 technology, instead being playable on XP with a crack. Maybe it was just Microsoft policy and FASA just couldn’t compete on the market.