FASA no more: Microsoft dissolves internal Shadowrun studio
- September 13, 2007 13:54 PM PST
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Microsoft confirmed longstanding rumors on Thursday that FASA, the developers behind Shadowrun for Xbox 360 and PC, has officially closed operations.
Shadowrun dev takes a dirt nap
Effective Wednesday, more than half of FASA developers have been redeployed throughout Microsoft Game Studios to contribute on various cross-platform games says Microsoft.
"We are very proud of what the FASA team accomplished with Shadowrun, and we will continue to support the title," company officials said in a statement.
The announcement comes shortly after negative reception and subsequent poor sales of Shadowrun on PC and Xbox 360. Critics panned the game's lack of content and high price when considering it as a multiplayer-only title. GamePro gave the game a 3.25 out of 5 on Xbox 360 and a 4.25 out of 5 for PC.
On June 22, FASA studio head Mitch Gitelman defending widespread criticism of the game saying, "If you play just about any first person, next-generation shooter that's come out recently, you're looking at the single player game being about 10 hours. I've been playing Shadowrun for three years... This game truly has legs."
"Microsoft not tolerating failure" seems to be the underlying sentiment here. Unfortunately for half of the dev guys, they won't get a second chance, at least with Microsoft.
