Forums of the Megaverse®

Rifts: Promise of Power was an excellent game but was killed by Nokia because they abandoned the North American market with their N-Gage, so there was a game available for sale but no platform to play it on. Backbone does make plenty of games for other platforms so why hasn't it been rereleased? Is Nokia sitting on the product, does Kevin have any say in what has happened and will happen to the game and if so why has it gone into limbo?

PC would be.. meh.. but getting it released on another smartphone would be ideal. Or even DS with some enhancements.

I'm thinking a DS release would be great, I find that when you use a game app on a smart phone the power drains too quickly.

I would prefer a PSP version if a handheld version were to be made. I don't like gaming on phones (too difficult, controls are usually bad) and I don't like the DS (don't want to manage two screens). I would also be in favor of a console/PC version. Perhaps PSN/XBLA?

Rift Jumper wrote:The N-Gage? Really? Why Kev?

Conventional wisdom is that the N-Gage guys made an offer first and the price was right, so Palladium took it without bothering to do their homework about whether the N-Gage had any real chance in the market. I don't think Siembieda's ever publicly explained why they licensed a Rifts game to the N-Gage instead of some other, better, less obviously failure-bound platform though, so we'll probably never know.

One thing that's almost certain though is that the contract locked Palladium into some sort of exclusivity deal where they couldn't license videogame adaptations to other platforms for a while. It's the only reasonable explanation for why Palladium stayed so quiet about videogame licenses for so long after the N-Gage died.

Nokia also sabotaged the release by pulling the NGage-QD from the North American market almost immediatedly before or following (I can't remember exactly)the release of PoP. When PoP came out I looked for the NGage and could not find it available anywhere or for sale online other than used ones on EBay.

I thik the game from what I saw was quite limited due tot eh Platform for which it was designed. I would like a version for hte DS myself as there are 4 in my house between my wife and 3 kids and the DS can do a lot of things in regard to intereaction with physcially have to blow at the systemt o blow out candles etc. And two screens allow for menus and play to go on at the same time without the screen having toswitch.

EDIT - However I have state that Palladium was really quite negligent in thier dealings for this since Nokia while a good cell phone product has Zero real credibility in the video game market and to agree to letting htem make a game for their specific cell phone/thing was short sighted at best and down right stupid and reckless at worst. Reckless in teh sense it was a waste of resources on something that was doomed to failure just based on what it was and who was doing it.

I knwo the first thing I thoguht and said to my freinds (also Rifts lovers) was uh Nokia N-Gage? What in GODS name are they thinking by doing THAT?

jaymz wrote:I knwo the first thing I thoguht and said to my freinds (also Rifts lovers) was uh Nokia N-Gage? What in GODS name are they thinking by doing THAT?

Yeah, I think the only person in North American who couldn't see the downfall of the NGage was Kevin. I mean the PSP and DS came out on the market (experts in game and platform design) and the previous model of NGage tanked so bad it's notorious. Just walking into any retail outlet and looking at these different platforms would tell anyone what the score was.

I wonder if it cost Palladium anything? I mean, it's their IP ,did they have to front any money? If not, then it wasn't a costly investment. Alhtough getting this game mainstream now would give a kick to popularity. But I assume it'd cost too much. That and not owning any rights to the game means it doesn't actually belong to palladium. I don't know, I'm just trying to justify why the hell we can't play the damned thing!

scottypotty wrote:I wonder if it cost Palladium anything? I mean, it's their IP ,did they have to front any money? If not, then it wasn't a costly investment. Alhtough getting this game mainstream now would give a kick to popularity. But I assume it'd cost too much. That and not owning any rights to the game means it doesn't actually belong to palladium. I don't know, I'm just trying to justify why the hell we can't play the damned thing!

It's called licensing.
It may be Palladium IP but that's where it ends for them, the engine that drives the game does not belong to PB.
PB would have to do the legal dance again to get another company to create another game for them and what flavor of the week platform are they going to create it for.

This is something we should be crowdsourcing for!

I would be happy to see it on anything.

Alpha 11 wrote:I would be happy to see it on anything.

The very same company that made the actual game does ports to the 3DS and XBOX Live Arcade. They have ported most of their titles already.