The name “FASA Interactive” will be familiar to anyone who loved them some Mechwarrior back in the day. Sadly, they’re no more, having been shut down by Microsoft, who bought the company in 1999. Bought then, allegedly, ruined.
FASA founder Jordan Weisman has said that once Microsoft bought the studio, things changed.
When Microsoft bought FASA Interactive and incorporated it into Microsoft… the two reasons they bought us was, one, they wanted the catalogue of intellectual properties and, two, they felt that we had developed a really good development culture. And the reality is that, pretty much from the day we moved to Redmond, that development culture was destroyed.
I don’t think the studio ever really had a chance. It was destroyed right in the beginning.
Well. Not much more to add to that, really.
Microsoft “destroyed development culture” at FASA – Weisman [GI.biz]
Jackson Thurtle
August 27, 2009 at 11:57 AM
This kinda doesn’t surprise me. I mean, FASA was never a large studio, headcount-wise, and uprooting all of these people who lived whereever they lived, and putting them all somewhere else, as well as turning the All Seeing Eye of Sauron upon them would pretty much not give them a chance.
Lesson to be had here, EA and Activision.
Report Permalinkplmko
August 27, 2009 at 3:10 PM
All I can say is Microsoft has no ethics in terms of growing the video game industry. Their focus is cash grabbing, this is evident in their strategy to buy out developers rather than form their own.
Report PermalinkJay
August 27, 2009 at 7:26 PM
Really? Takes a genius to know that.
Did you also know that Microsoft is a business empire worth billions and billions!
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