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Yesterday GameSpot confirmed the rumor that Treyarch’s survival horror/driving game Dead Rush has been canceled. The official Dead Rush website is also down. Quite disappointing news, as this game actually looked like it had the potential to inject a new style of game play into the horror genre. I’ll be removing the Dead Rush page from the database shortly. |
You could always put up a section on the site for cancelled Survival Horror games. There are a few notable cancelled SH titles, and this was apparently one of them.
Couldn’t hurt, and your site could always use more content.
http://www.evilunleashed.com
This sucks. I read the article in the San Andres issue of Game Informer a while back. I was really looking forward to this game. Guess I’ll add it to the soon to be “Unreleased Horror” section of my website, Evil Unleashed. I was going to add it as a main sectino when it came out…Meh.
Just another great game cancelled becuase of “reasons.” Yeah, I know they said that it wasn’t living up to their expectations, but come on! This game would have sold MILLIONS on the market! It would have disappeared off of store shelves. I would loike to know the REAL reason why it was cancelled.
I seriously doubt that it would have sold “millions.” It looked like a lot of fun, but most games don’t break a million units. The original Resident Evil did 4 million units worldwide, and it’s probably the best selling game in this genre by far. I suspect that the Silent Hill games just barely break a million units.
But Dead Rush did look cool. Working in the game industry, here are the reasons I think are probably likely:
1) It was a brainchild of one of the management that was fired.
2) The game was behind and didn’t look like it was going to be finished on time. If it’s behind early in the project, it’s probably cheaper for Activision to kill it now rather than dump more money into it even though they know they can’t make their investment back unless it ships at Christmas or whenever.
3) The entire company is refocusing on another as-yet-unannounced title, and they feel that this new title is more important than Dead Rush.
I’d guess 2 is most likely, with 3 being the next-most-likely.
Chris
http://www.creature-corner.com
Howdy. Nice site.
Just wanted to chime in: it’s neither of the three. Just from what I got at E3, none of those scenarios fit.
1. This was Treyarch’s pet project, their first in-house design. They’d done licenses up till now, including the wildly successful Spiderman film adaptations, both for Activision. Then, Activision kills their one ‘dream project’ (exact quote from an executive-level Treyarch employee) without explanation? Doesn’t follow.
2. At E3, they had a LOT of playable stuff. The engine was in good shape. It looked fun as hell. Behind? I’d have to say, behind what? This is an internal project, something they’d been working on for awhile, I never got any idea they had any exterior time frame to meet.
3. Like I said, this was Treyarch’s baby. For them to kill it themselves would be just a little odd.
My theory? They took it to Activision, saw the raves it was getting in the press and gaming community, and asked for more than Activision wanted to pony up. Since Treyarch themselves have been absolutely silent about it (never had trouble getting them to answer my e-mails before) I would be willing to bet this will show up under another publishing arm eventually. The market value of a game combining GTA-style driving and survival horror is just too big to junk arbitrarily.
Anyway, just wanted to pass it along. Your mileage may vary. 🙂
Dark
Hi Dark,
Treyarch is wholly owned by Activision, so Activision can tell them to do anything they want. I think this was definitely a publishing-arm decision, but its pretty hard to tell without knowing what is going on inside the company. Even though its an original title, it can still be “behind” because they still must have had some release date (like perhaps this Christmas). A lot of playable stuff isn’t nearly enough if the game is missing its deadlines.
I expect the cancellation, like almost all game cancelations, was entirely driven by money concerns. Activision either didn’t feel the game had enough bang for the buck, felt that delays would threaten the profitability of the title, or (most likely) wanted the entire company on some other project that is guaranteed to be profitable (like Spiderman 3 or something). It’s also possible (though unlikely) that some technical issue (like a fundamental deficiency in the engine technology) threatened to block and/or stall development for longer than would be profitable.
Who knows, really. It’s certainly sad to see this game canceled, as it looked like a lot of fun. I’ve actually been out to Treyarch before and those guys are a good bunch. If I run across any more information about this title, I’ll be sure to post it.
none
This was the first game that seemed to really answer the guestion what would you do if you woke up one morning to a zombie infestation. i know in my mind the answer has always been a big truck lots of gas and some metal spike arranged on the bumper. i’ve seen this design engine and it looked more than promising i doubt theyed just scratch it. i think we’ll be hearing more about it in the future.
PS: spiderman 3 (chuckling) i hope not.