InfogramesNotAtari courts Firaxis
Civ III expansion. Pirates remake. Full-blown penetration.
InfogramesNotAtari has made a deal with Firaxis Games, giving the Frenchmen rights to publish many of the Maryland-based developer's future works, including a newly announced Civilization III expansion, Conquests, and Sid Meier's Pirates.
According to slightly more ambiguous aspects of the press release, the publisher has passed Firaxis the rights to Sid Meier's Colonization, Covert Action, Gunship, Silent Service: The Submarine Simulation, F19 Stealth Fighter, F15 Strike Eagle and Sid Meier's CPU Bach, some of which will be developed into new titles. What's more, "the first rights of negotiation to develop and publish two unnamed future titles have been granted to Firaxis and Atari, respectively". What does this gibberish mean?
According to InfogramesNotAtari, Civilization Conquests will launch before Christmas, and features eight new civilisations to compete as, with new victory conditions, Wonders of the World, terrain elements, resources, city improvements and governments, and improvements to multiplayer, play-by-email and even the game editor.
Sid Meier's Pirates, on the other hand, is an update to the 80s favourite of the same name. Although it still charts the life of a pirate on the Spanish Main, the 21st Century Pirates will feature a 3D graphics, a new gameplay engine and surround sound amongst many other things. Players will have to command a pirate vessel through the high seas, fighting off the challenge of other veritable booty-hunters in naval engagements and even duelling with rival captains. Obviously the crew will grow with your success and there will be plenty of characters to get involved with, rather than the usual array of nameless swashbucklers.
Truth be told, this writer doesn't know too much about the original Pirates (well, grow us a beard and sue us, Benedict, not everybody's 55), but the new one sounds like it needs more than an InfogramesNotAtari press release to get the point across. Obviously with Firaxis at the helm (ho!) we can expect something more than this sort of thing when the game looms over the horizon in early 2004.