NCSoft: No comment on Marvel Deal with Cryptic |
First off, here's a little background to this odd situation. Flashback to 2004. Marvel Enterprises sues NCSoft and Cryptic studios for their MMO game City of Heroes, because some of the in-game options allow players to create characters that are too similar to The Hulk, some of the X-Men, and other heroes in their Marvel Universe.
Flash-forward to late September. We get news that Microsoft, Marvel, and Cryptic Studios are working on a title called Marvel Universe Online, a cross-platform MMORPG that's set to take advantage of Live Anywhere. The part here that personally makes my stomach turn in a weird way, is that Marvel and Microsoft seem very much proud that they chose the company who made City of Heroes. I bet they're thinking that gamers would react this way: "Ooh... they're getting a game-maker who made good game in same genre before, must save up for this new one they're making." Yeah, and completely toss aside the fact that they previously sued them. Anyway, that's just me.
Oh well, that's how business is. That and it's not our call here in QJ to pass judgment. Perhaps they've made amends, perhaps it strictly was a copyright issue and Marvel is just vigilant when it comes to protecting their property. If you think about it, it has been more than a year.
Anyway here's what the other company that got sued, NCSoft, had to say about Cryptic working with Marvel.
NCsoft has no response regarding the business dealings of an independent company such as Cryptic Studios, however, NCsoft does expect to continue working closely with Cryptic on developing and maintaining the City of Heroes and City of Villains games into the future.
NCsoft is committed to delivering to its customers the best games possible and this news from Cryptic Studios should in no way affect the high-quality product that the fans of City of Heroes and City of Villains have come to expect. The "City of" franchise recently released its seventh major content update in the summer and the next free expansion is scheduled to be released later this year. Additional details of future plans for City of Heroes and City of Villains have been spelled out by CrypticÂ’s lead designer, Matt Miller, in an address to the gameÂ’s community.
"The ‘City of’ franchise is an exceptional product for NCsoft and we do not expect that to change anytime soon," said Robert Garriott, CEO of NCsoft North America. "City of Heroes and City of Villains have cornered the market on comic-book themed massively multiplayer online games and any competition for this space is several years away, so these games still have a lot of open field running to do."
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Comments
I don't get your point. Do you mean that because Cryptic and Marvel had a bunch of preliminary court appearances that they should therefore hold some life-long grudge against each other? That's not business. It just doesn't work like that. Corporations are not people: they have a duty to their shareholders to make a profit, and not let technical disputes get in the way. When a company's people get stupid and hold grudges then profits suffer. Look at what happened with WordPerfect, with Apple in the 90s, with Microsoft and Sun over Java and, most catastrophically, wth IBM fifteen years ago.
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