Will PGR, Halo Wars, or Dance Central Be Seen Again?

http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/10/31/microsoft-talks-pgr-halo-wars-and-dance-central-prospects

With the launch of Microsoft's latest console just three weeks away, now is as good a time as any to start wondering about the future of franchises that don't have a clear path ahead of them. Having addressed the future of Gears of War, IGN asked Microsoft Game Studios head Phil Spencer about several Xbox exclusives and whether we might see them again in an interview on Podcast Unlocked. Here's what he had to say about the outlook on Project Gotham Racing, Dance Central, and Halo Wars.

Halo Wars
"I'm a big fan of Halo Wars," Spencer said when asked about the Xbox 360 real-time strategy game. Since its launch in 2009, the strategy spin-off hasn't been heard from again. It was never released on PC (despite seemingly being a perfect fit) and developer Ensemble Studios shut down following the game's completion. The studio's founder revealed last year that Bungie wasn't pleased with "the whoring out of [its] franchise." But years have now passed and Bungie is no longer owned by Microsoft, so what's the status of Halo Wars?

"[Halo Wars is] something I'm very interested in. Bonnie [Ross, 343 Industries GM] and I talk about it quite a bit," Spencer revealed. "I think Halo Wars falls in the shadow of the Halo FPS. I mean, you're doing 10 or 12 million units of the Halo FPS, anything else that comes out Halo that doesn't hit those numbers, it's kind of easy for certain people to look at it and say, 'Well, that didn't work.' And I don't think that's the right measure of success; I think Halo Wars was a high-quality console-based RTS game. It was fun.

"And especially now, when I think about some of the capability -- you might roll your eyes at this -- but when I think about some voice and other things that you could add to that, that's the kind of gameplay that I think would be great in those scenarios. And also a game that maybe I could play on multiple devices: I could play on Windows as well, I could play on console, because it has that gameplay that lends itself so well to that. So I suspect you'll see us do something with...they're kind of busy right now at 343, which is good, we're really happy with what they're working on. But I think there is opportunity for us to do something more with that franchise and Bonnie, Kiki [Wolfkill, 343 executive producer], and Josh [Holmes, creative director] are doing a great job in thinking holistically about the Halo franchise."

As for who would develop such a game, IGN mentioned Robot Entertainment, the Ages of Empires Online and Orcs Must Die developer that was founded by former Ensemble employees. Spencer didn't seem so sure that's the direction that Microsoft would go in, though. "I haven't talked to [Robot Entertainment] in a while," he said. "In fact, I'm not sure what the status of that studio is. If we were going to do something we'd either have to think about doing it internally or finding a good RTS developer to help. There aren't a lot of great RTS developers out there anymore. We'd want to do a great job with it."

Project Gotham Racing
Project Gotham Racing was once the flagship racing series for Xbox, with PGR1 and PGR3 being launch titles for Xbox 1 and Xbox 360, respectively. But with developer Bizarre Creations being acquired by Activision in 2007 (and then closed in 2011), PGR hasn't been heard from since the release of PGR4 in 2007. With the first-party racing game slate being fairly full at the moment, Spencer wasn't especially high on the possibility of a new PGR being seen anytime soon.

When asked if the franchise has a future on Xbox, Spencer responded, "Maybe. I think the Kudos system that we had in PGR was the real secret sauce. I thought that was the thing that people really loved. It had a great feel, it was there at launch, which I think was important."

eferring to rumors that circulated about a possible new PGR, Spencer said, "I think some of the rumors around PGR were probably us working on Forza Horizon with Playground, and I think people just kind of were guessing that it was a PGR game. We talk, [Forza developer Turn 10 head] Alan Hartman and I, talk about PGR. I think we're kind of full in the racing space right now when we think about our franchises, but I know there's a lot of love for that franchise out there and it'd be interesting to think about what we could do. I don't know that we'd ever have three console racing franchises. That seems like a lot for a first party with Forza Horizon and obviously Forza Motorsport."

Interestingly, Spencer made it seem as if Forza Horizon were its own franchise. When it was pointed out that Forza Horizon and Forza Motorsport are all Forza, Spencer said, "Forza Horizon, I'd say, it's not PGR from an arcade style, but it's not me sitting on a circuit running lap after lap. It's more of an open-world."

Dance Central
Dance Central, the Xbox 360-exclusive Kinect dancing series, saw annual releases between 2010 and 2012. However, even with Xbox One having the revamped Kinect 2.0, there's no word on a next-gen Dance Central. Spencer says a lot of that comes down to Harmonix being busy with the development of Fantasia and the fact that Dance Central is a Harmonix game.

"Having Dance Central again on the platform would be great. You'd want to have the right studio working on it, the right team," he said. When it was pointed out that team is Harmonix, Spencer agreed: "Which is Harmonix. So it wasn't a situation where I thought that games should end up with another studio and simply kind of leveraged the brand, or something.

"For us, it was a second-party relationship, so it actually wasn't a first-party published game, meaning they funded the game and we marketed and distributed it for them. So they control the destiny of that franchise. But I know Alex well and we have conversations about it, and it is a great franchise. You can see more of Dance Central but I think we'd have to do it at the right time with the right studio, which is Harmonix."