14 DAY TRIAL // Rumors might regularly pop around about a new Timesplitters video game being under development, but one of the game’s original creators believes that launching a new first-person shooter has little chance of success because of the current dual monopoly that Activision and Electronic Arts have on the market.
Steve Ellis, who is the co-founder of developer Free Radical, told Edge that the first-person market is dominated by two major series and that, “Nobody really buys any FPSes unless they’re called Call Of Duty. I guess Battlefield did okay, but aside from that pretty much every FPS loses money.”
The developer also claimed that another high-profile shooter, Crysis 2, had not managed to sell enough copies to actually recuperate its development costs, making publishers uninterested in developing new intellectual properties that use the genre.
He added, “I spent the whole of 2008 going round talking to publishers trying to sign up Timesplitters 4. There just isn’t the interest there in doing anything that tries to step away from the rules of the genre – no one wants to do something that’s quirky and different, because it’s too much of a risk. And a large part of that is the cost of doing it.”
After the negotiations linked to Timesplitters 4 failed to produce a result, Free Radical was purchased by Crytek and Steve Ellis has since left the company and has formed a new development studio, called Crash Lab, which is focused on creating mobile titles.
The Timesplitters series was well-known for its cartoonish characters and for its lighter approach to the first-person shooter mechanics.
The three released games included a lot of parody and humor, something that the modern FPS has abandoned in favor of serious tones and bombastic war-related rhetoric.
Crytek is preparing Crysis 3 for a 2013 release.