OtherSide Entertainment doesn’t want to self-publish System Shock 3 unless it really has to. Speaking to Video Games Chronicle this week, producer, designer and director of the original System Shock Warren Spector shared some information about System Shock 3‘s state of affairs. According to Spector, there is “a lot of interest” from potential partners.
“We don’t have a deal right now, but luckily OtherSide is flush enough that we’re funding ourselves and can continue to do that for quite a while. Let’s see what happens,” Spector said. “We need somebody to say, ‘Yeah, let’s talk deal terms,’ and we’re in that kind of discussion with some folks. But we’re not quite finished yet.”
OtherSide could publish the title themselves, but they prefer not to. “We don’t particularly want to be a publisher,” Spector explained. “[Founder] Paul Neurath and I have worked with publishers before, Origin self-published when I was there, and we don’t want to get into the market of distributing stuff.”
OtherSide is also looking for funding partners in their search for publishing and distribution deals. Starbreeze Studios previously held the publishing rights and was originally set to distribute System Shock 3. Starbreeze acquired the rights in 2017, and during that time contributed financially to the game’s development.
Starbreeze Studios has been through lot since System Shock 3 was announced. After a tumultuous 2018, Starbreeze sold back the publishing rights for the title to OtherSide. According to Starbreeze’s announcement of the sale, OtherSide Entertainment will repay the development costs that Starbreeze incurred during development.
OtherSide Entertainment was started by the original founder of Looking Glass Studios, and has recently been under a bit of fire as well. OtherSide’s first game Underworld Ascendant was released to extremely negative reviews and disappointed a lot of fans who were expecting the sort of iconic gameplay of Thief, System Shock, and Ultima Underworld. Underworld Ascendant has been updated since its release to address some of the criticisms.
The most recent major news on System Shock 3 is an in-game teaser trailer shared during the Unity Keynote at this year’s Game Developers Conference. No release date has been set for the game, but Warren Spector and the team at OtherSide seem committed to the title and will hopefully have more to show soon. Fans have been waiting for a full twenty years for the next installment in this franchise, and are sure to be understanding if OtherSide opt to take their time and make sure they do right by this cherished and influential title.
In the slightly more definite future, Nightdive Studios claims that their much-delayed remake of the original System Shock will be ready to release sometime in 2020.