Fallout MMORPG to Save Interplay?
Posted Saturday, June 26, 2004 - 15:07 CET by chevalier

Herve says that only several short-term obstacles are on his way back to making big cash. Such as only $900 thousand loss in the quarter ending March 31 and a just a mere $18 million in liabilities compared to $4.5 million in assets total, let alone problems with letting employees back at their desks. The Force is strong in Herve, but wonder if Herve is equally strong in the Force.

A new solid source of cash is going to be online multiplayer gaming and Fallout in particular. So, it seems that laying BIS off wasn't perhaps the best idea. None of the famed Fallout developers is currently working for Interplay. For this reason, given that a simple addition of a multiplayer protocol to existing Fallout material is not quite enough, it's hardly reasonable to expect that new Fallout MMORPG to have the atmosphere of the original Fallout. However, if they actually make it, that's going to be one of the brightest days in the history of the RPG genre.

Now, its plan is to enter the PC massively-multiplayer online market with what franchise assets remain to its name, particularly the post-nuclear RPG series Fallout. A third stand-alone RPG in the Fallout series was cancelled late last year when Interplay closed Black Isle Studios, but Interplay still owns the intellectual property rights to the series.

"Based on a detailed review of where our industry stands and the level of interest in the gaming community in taking some of our premier properties online, we are now pursuing several options to fund our entry into massively-multiplayer online gaming with titles including Fallout," Caen said. "Initial feedback from our investment bank and ongoing dialogue with others in the gaming sector appear to confirm that the combination of our valuable and popular intellectual properties with the rapidly growing online gaming community is the best way to maximize Interplay shareholder value."

Read the whole thing at 1UP.