radar-group posts

On Monday Bethesda Softworks officially announced plans to publish Prey 2, the upcoming 2012 sequel to the 2006 released sci-fi FPS that was developed by Human Head Studios. Since then a couple of interesting tidbits about the game have come to light. One comes from IGN who has confirmed that while Prey 2 will use a game engine provided by id Software it won't be id Tech 5, the latest graphics engine that id developed to make its upcoming game Rage. Bethesda Softworks' PR head Pete Hines stated, "This game has been in development for quite a while and id Tech 5 is still in progress (until Rage ships, and probably even after). So it really wasn't an option."

On his Twitter page, Hines also stated, "It's worth clarifying that this Prey 2 is not what was announced before by anyone else. This is the Prey 2 Human Head wanted to make." Indeed the game was first announced back in 2008 by The Radar Group, founded by 3D Realms head Scott Miller who helped to develop the first Prey game with Human Head. Bethesda Softworks later purchased the Prey IP rights from The Radar Group.

Finally another magazine cover image from overseas, Game Reactor, shows that perhaps the Native American theme of the first Prey game has been replaced. You can see the cover after the jump:

It's been a crappy 2009 for 3D Realms. The Dallas-based game developer let go of its internal development team and got into a still ongoing lawsuit against Take Two Interactive over the 12 years (and counting) development of their first person shooter Duke Nukem Forever. Yet the company's CEO Scott Miller claims that their main Duke Nukem franchise is still very much alive.

Shacknews has posted up some new info from Miller (taken from the first print issue of a new game magazine called Gamesauce) where he says, "There are numerous other Duke games in various stages of development, several due out this year." Miller still insists that Duke Nukem Forever is not dead saying, " . . . yes, we released the internal team, but that doesn't correlate to the demise of the project." Even a long-in-development Duke Nukem movie is still in play with Miller saying, " the Duke film is making steady progress."

The article goes into specifics on how 3D Realms was able to stay in operation for so long without releasing Duke Nukem Forever. For example, Miller claims that they made $30 million with sales of Max Payne (which they worked on with Remedy) and made another $48 million selling the franchise to Take Two.