fasa posts

In 1999 Microsoft bought FASA Interactive and incorporated the game company resposible for MechWarrior, Crimson Skies and other games into their Redmond, Washington campus. Now, in a new chat with Gamesindustry.biz, FASA's creator Jordan Wiseman says that move was the beginning of the end, saying, "I don't think the studio ever really had a chance. It was destroyed right in the beginning."

The studio created a number of games for Microsoft including new Mechwarrior games, the Crimson Skies PC and Xbox games and finally the Shadowrun FPS game before shutting the studio down in 2007. Wiseman says that the move cause the team to be absorbed into Microsoft's culture. Wiseman recently announced plans to revamp the Mechwarrior franchise but adds, "we're operating under some pretty tight restrictions of the licence that make publishing the games kind of challenging.."

Fans have been awaiting a new Mechwarrior game for the PC for years and today a new video hit the Interwebs that suggests that wait may be coming to an end. The 10 second video shows a really big mech-like foot making its presence known on a unsuspecting city street.

So is this truly a teaser for a new Mechwarrior game? We know that Microsoft, who published the last PC game in the series (Mechwarrior 4: Mercenaries back in 2002), sold off the Mechwarrior interactive game rights to a company called Smith and Tinker some time ago. That company was formed by Jordan Weisman, who helped to create the Mechwarrior series in the first place when he formed FASA. Voodoo Extreme hints that the developer behind this teaser might be Piranha Games, a Vancouver-based studio who has done a variety of work over the years but nothing quite so high-profile as this. Hopefully we will get more info on this soon.

Update: Looks like IGN will get the reveal of the game early in the morning on Thursday . . . and what do you know; one of the folks who will be interviewed will be Jordan Weisman. Also Voodoo Extreme has added two more teaser trailers to the site that . . . well, don't show that much.