Gearbox picked up the the rights to the Homeworld series during THQ’s franchise fire sale earlier this year. After the acquisition, they quickly announced that high definition re-releases of Homeworld and Homeworld 2 were in the works. And now they can add a third Homeworld game to their development slate… sort of.
At PAX Prime this weekend, Gearbox announced that they’ve partnered with Blackbird Interactive, a small developer that was founded by several members of the original Homeworld team at Relic Entertainment. As part of the deal, their current project, Hardware: Shipbreakers, will be folded into the Homeworld franchise. The game will now be known as Homeworld: Shipbreakers and it will serve as a prequel to the entire Homeworld series.
Gearbox will provide financial support to Blackbird as, in the words of CEO Randy Pitchford, they are not the best team to develop a sci-fi RTS. Pitchford also commented on the production support they plan to offer to Blackbird: “We’ve become expert at production and that’s where we can help. I mean, we shipped Duke Nukem Forever, we didn’t build it but we made sure it came out. And that’s a ****ing miracle.”
[Source: Polygon]
