That headline means that the hardcore niche shooter fans are going to be quite upset. In responding to a user inquiry on the status of Tribes: Ascend updates, Hi-Rez’s Todd Harris delivered some very bad news. “There are no major dev updates planned for Tribes: Ascend in the next six months.” he said.
He elaborated that the focus of the F2P company is its upcoming products, SMITE and Global Agenda 2. The god-based MOBA SMITE is slowly approaching its release date with an ever growing community behind it. That is currently the focus of development.
We spoke with Todd on the state of Global Agenda 2 at PAX East and were glad to hear of its continued development and lessons learned from the original, which has also ceased development. GA2 would become the focus after SMITE, and T:A2 after that more so than continued T:A work.
The news doesn’t mean T:A is dead. Only that nothing is planned in the short-term. Kate continues to work on the title as time allows, mainly map making. Should time allow, these maps, along with general bug fixes, may see a final polish and release. Support also remains for servers, community events, offline events and live-streaming.
Seems the niche was a little too niche to bring in the appropriate ongoing dollars. Or that the business model, which was modified, didn’t fit the company’s return on investment requirements. Or community expectations.
Regardless of the reasoning, Redditers are not happy.