Oddworld Inhabitants no longer working with Microsoft

By Tom Bramwell Published 29 March, 2004

Oddworld's publishing arrangements just got stranger, too.

Californian developer Oddworld Inhabitants is seeking a new publisher for its next Xbox game in the Oddworld universe, tentatively titled Stranger, as Microsoft no longer has any involvement with the title.

The new game, which is the first to be produced by the company since the Microsoft-published Xbox launch title Munch's Oddysee, was originally known as Steef's Oddysee, but now appears to have adopted the name Stranger, which is also the name of its new lead character.

The company hopes to finish the title, which was shown off in video form at GDC last week, before the end of the year. However, a publisher for the Western-themed game has not yet been found, although Oddworld Inhabitants representatives at GDC did confirm that they are in talks with a number of companies.

The game is expected to remain Xbox-exclusive despite the fact that Microsoft is no longer publishing it. Oddworld's original deal with Microsoft for Munch Oddysee was rumoured to be highly lucrative for the company and its founders, Lorne Lanning and Sherry McKenna, with the now-popular term "money hat" (used to describe a payment made to a developer by a platform holder in order to keep their products exclusive to one console) originally coined by satirical videogame comic-strip Penny-Arcade to describe the exclusivity agreement.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (7) Latest comment 8 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Zero Beat #1 8 years ago

    I hope Lorne comes up with a winner this time and Microsoft eventually get back on board.

  • Blerk #2 8 years ago

    Microsoft not throwing cash at exclusives like it's going out of fashion? What's up with them?

    /checks Microsoft's temperature

  • Kami #3 8 years ago

    Dr Blerk, are they OK?

    I mean... it's not normal Microsoft behaviour! I sure hope it's nothing serious...

  • Freek #4 8 years ago

    Perhaps this has something to do with the quality of the game.

  • Blerk #5 8 years ago

    And that's relevant to the story because....?

    Anyway, I've given Microsoft a thorough check-up and they seem to be fine although they seem to have lost a lot of cash through an old war wound.

    That'll be $50billion please, Mr Gates.

    /kerching!

  • Royal Fool #6 8 years ago

    "Who cares, they chose xbox in the beginning because the PS2 didn't have enough power for what they wanted to do"

    Sure. Except they didn't "choose it in the beginning", they already had developed it for a while on the PS2. Microsoft's purchase of the publishing rights pretty much forced them to switch platforms, whether they liked it or not.

  • Freek #7 8 years ago

    Buggy windows releases have nothing to do with it. If the game is sub par they aren't going to throw money at them. Money that can then be spend throwing it at developers who are making great games.