Red Mile Failing, Hereos Over Europe Release Doubtful?
See Full ImageIf you've been looking forward to Sin City and Heroes Over Europe, you may not want to hold your breath. It appears that publisher Red Mile is in dire straits, which would mean that both projects would either keel right over, or the developers in question would need to find a new publisher (which of course, would take additional time).
According to this discouraging report, Red Mile is running on fumes. They were in a decent position last year, when they signed a co-publishing deal with Atari to produce Heroes Over Europe, but Atari has now withdrawn the agreement. This means that checks from Atari have stopped arriving at Red Mile HQ, which in turn means they can't pay developer Transmission Games, which has already walked away...Red Mile owes them $281,000. In order to clean up the mess and keep their doors open for business, they may go after Atari for "compensatory damages," but the cash flow may halt entirely before that move comes to fruition. Apparently, Red Mile has about $341,000 left, which will only get them through March; after that, the company says they need about $10 million to keep going through the next 2-3 years. Red Mile's total losses have exceeded $35 million since they first started out in 2004, which means securing additional money via bank loans may not be possible, especially in this difficult economy. Therefore, Red Mile may be facing the end of the road, leaving a couple interesting projects up in the air.
Perhaps Atari will stand up and decide to take on both Sin City and Heroes Over Europe, but as they've already declined partial publishing rights to the latter, it seems unlikely. Well, who else might want 'em? EA, you out there?
2/17/2009 Ben Dutka
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Comments (10 posts)
Nynja
Tuesday, February 17, 2009 @ 11:04:09 AM
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That alone doesn't sound good. If a company is unable to turn profit in over 4 years, I think its about time for them to close the doors. Besides, the co-publishing deal they had sounds more like RM was just the middle man between Transmission Games and Atari. Maybe Atari realized they were in on the bad end of the deal. With recent flops like the flagship title "Alone in the Dark", they need to cut needless spending where ever they can.
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PANICinc
Tuesday, February 17, 2009 @ 12:16:37 PM
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opsdaddy
Tuesday, February 17, 2009 @ 1:07:16 PM
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Tim Speed24
Tuesday, February 17, 2009 @ 1:21:11 PM
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L7 345T
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Qubex
Tuesday, February 17, 2009 @ 8:29:51 PM
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Commercialism governs everything; most games, to impress us gamers require "block busting" finances... without this finance how to create something truly impressive... we can see that out of 20-50 titles each year, you may get about 10 AAA "block busting" games... similar to your 2-5 AAA "block busting" movies you may want to see; like Dark Knight etc... how many secondary and tertiary titles really survive and make enough to warrant more of the same from the same developer/publisher... like movies; you have your Camerons and Spielbergs; in games you have your EA' and Codemasters... only a few in the end get the block busting sales to permit these publishes to bet on a number of titles simultaneously... if one doesn't work, or even two... others will... pulling in enough to make ends meet...
If indy developers flunk a game... they may be lucky to have enough funding to try again... if not it is bye bye... 1st round and you are out... unfortunately we will see more of this as time goes by... us gamers are demanding Killzone 2 and MGS4 quality... even smaller games like Super StarDust, Flower etc are quality... not many but they are there... if we are not prepared to accept rubbish, then a lot of secondary developers will go bust and out... The way the cookie crumbles...
Maybe if game pricing came down... and there was more to go around... mediocre games for a 1/3rd of the price would sell better overall... these secondary and tertiary developers could survive another day... otherwise the pie will devided amongst the big boys predominantly...
Q!
"i aM hOMe"
Last edited by Qubex on 2/17/2009 8:33:45 PM
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shaydey77
Wednesday, February 18, 2009 @ 2:44:59 PM
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Cpt_Geez
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Tuesday, February 17, 2009 @ 10:59:13 AM