Originally posted by: PhatoseAlpha
Originally posted by: BD2003
Originally posted by: PhatoseAlpha
I imagine part of it is that it's a large undertaking. Predator thermal vision typically means you get to texture all your art assets twice, once for standard, once for thermal. Level design for the colonial marines is pretty standard, but the predator is bound to be a little more difficult, and I'd bet my hat designing a whole single player campaign for the alien that doesn't get boring is a huge pain in the rear end. On the multiplayer side of things, it's a got to be a balancing nightmare.
And yet, all this has already been done. Well. Twice. So I'm not sure what your point is.
And neither of those two times qualified as a smashing commercial success.
Development costs keep going up. You're looking at a complicated dev process, lots of art assets to create, and franchise licensing fees to boot, all to make a sequel in a series which hasn't proved to be a blockbuster seller. Lots of work, high risk, and licensing fees to cut into your bottom line if you are successful.
It's not really that hard to see why management is jumping over themselves to greenlight this one, is it?