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Gearbox had Blade Runner license, dropped it for financial reasons
by Xav de Matos, Jun 30, 2011 6:00pm PDTIn a recent feature in Official PlayStation Magazine, Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford postulates that if his team went ahead with its early plans to develop a game based on the Blade Runner franchise, it "would have been the end" of his company [via CVG].
Citing Blade Runner as a dream property that Gearbox once had in its pocket, Pitchford says that a game based the Ridley Scott film--which is based on the on the Philip K. Dick classic novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep"--"would've cost like $40m to make and sold about 600,000 units."
That decision, Pitchford says, would have forced Gearbox to close its doors.
Pitchford says that there is "no rational" business model that would have made sense to release the Blade Runner game Gearbox envisioned. "If we'd made it with a business model that did work, it would not have been the Blade Runner game we all would have wanted," he said.
According to Pitchford, Gearbox went as far as to meet with Alien and Blade Runner director Ridley Scott to discuss plans for games based on his work.
Though it was once thought to be canceled, Aliens: Colonial Marines is still in development and will arrive on the PC, Xbox 360, and PS3 next spring.
I guess that means we're stuck with only one awesome Blade Runner game, folks.
Comments
Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford told Official PlayStation Magazine that plans for a game set in the Blade Runner universe were scrapped for financial reasons, sending an echo of sadness to all nerds who are not in fact replicants.
Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford told Official PlayStation Magazine that plans for a game set in the Blade Runner universe were scrapped for financial reasons, sending an echo of sadness to all nerds who are not in fact replicants. : Shacknews
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WTF is wrong with this community?
Gearbox should be lauded for making the decision to not cut any corners, for either stick to their vision or don't do it at all.
Bottom line, Gearbox is a great developer (despite DNF; all they did was polishing someone elses turd - at the end it was of course still a turd).
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