Things haven’t been going terribly well over at UTV Ignition, publishers of well-regarded niche titles like Deadly Premonition and El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron. The Indian media conglomerate was recently purchased by Disney following the closure of their internal development studios.
UTV shocked fans last month with the cancellation of pre-orders for Vanillaware’s forthcoming PS3/Vita dungeon crawler Dragon’s Crown. However, rather than nixing the project altogether, the publishing duties have merely been passed to a firm that is equally familiar handling the bizarre and Japanese, Atlus.
“When we took over the reins, we realized that a lot of the information made available to the public was ambitious and unfounded conjecture. The release timing, the pricing, and many of the features detailed for fans and members of the press were simply unknowable at the time they were disseminated (and frankly we were quite shocked to find out that many of the details were made public unbeknownst to even the developers)” Atlus said via the PlayStation Blog.
“It’s still way too early in development to be talking about specifics, but we can say that the game simply cannot retail for $29.99. We don’t know where that price point came from, but it is a logistical impossibility. We’re all gamers and we all wished it could be so, but it would have essentially destroyed any chance for profitability.”
With so many publishers complaining about their bottom line whilst parading around with online passes and an endless downpour of DLC, it’s hard to be angry at Atlus after they rescued the next game from the studio that brought us Odin Sphere and Muramasa: The Demon Blade. I’m sure we’ll all live with the 2013 release date and a price north of thirty bucks. I’m just glad it’s still coming.
Dragon’s Crown Update: Atlus Assumes Publishing Duties for PS Vita, PS3 [PlayStation Blog]
