Aug 26, 2010
Midway’s Sin City-inspired open-world action game This Is Vegas has reportedly been flushed after three years in the making. A source close to the development team has revealed to UK gaming website CVG that the cancellation of the project is equivalent to setting fire to a reported $43 million, giving it the dubious honour of most monumental waste of money in the history of video gaming.
The trouble began in 2009 when Midway encountered financial difficulties, selling off a proportion of their assets to Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, including their subsidiary Surreal Software and with it, the This Is Vegas project. Allegedly in June of this year, Warner Bros. dissolved Surreal Software and This Is Vegas was officially shipped first-class to the Island of Lost Games to frolick with Shenmue 3 forever. Speaking directly to CVG, their source had this to say.
“Apparently the entire This Is Vegas project has been totally canned. Midway spent in the region of $43 million up to the point when it was being sold to WB [July 2009]. Alan Patmore, who was [Surreal] studio boss, either left or was let go – but considering the resources and art created this is a lot of work down the drain.
It was moving along to a point where the title was on the [Warner] schedule for release late last year – but [development] still needed another eight months to a year to finish, with a studio burn rate of $250,000 per month. It’s a ridiculous waste of money, a silly budget when you think that games like Konami’s Saw – which made profit – were built with around $3m.”
In development for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC, This Is Vegas was last shown at 2008′s Gamescom conference and appeared to take inspiration from sandbox action titles like Grand Theft Auto and Saints Row.
I was rather looking forward to this strangely enough, but I had started to think it must have been scrapped. It seems like such an astronomical amount of money to put into a game just to shelf it at this stage. Surely it would be better to finish the game and try to claw back as much money as possible?