Why Bringing The TimeSplitters Series To Next Generation Consoles Is A Good Idea
As a series, TimeSplitters used to be one of the greats. Gamers would gather together after school and sit for hours doing nothing but playing Arcade mode on TimeSplitters 2, simply because the game gave them the opportunity to have more than only two of four people playing on the screen at one time. This ability came from the ‘bots’ the game allowed players to insert into multiplayer games, to be held by themselves or with other players.
Since the release of the third game in the series, TimeSplitters Future Perfect, no game has given its players the ability to play against ‘bots’ in an in-game mode such as the Arcade or Challenge modes from this set of games. Today, game developers are only concerned about the multiplayer mode of their games, when it comes to encouraging gamers to play the game again, after they’ve played the story campaign through a couple of times.
Recently, a petition has been spread across the Internet around the world and through social networks several times over. The petition required signatures to show how many people would purchase a TimeSplitters HD Collection if the developers who bought out Free Radical, original creators of TimeSplitters, Crytek, made and released one. The reason the developers needed the petition is they couldn’t otherwise justify to those with decision making powers that releasing a TimeSplitters HD Collection is a lucrative business idea.
Sadly the petition seems to have failed for two main reasons, the first of which is that the only players who would purchase a TimeSplitters HD Collection are those who are older than most game developer’s target markets. The second reason the petition seems to have failed, is that gamers of the modern market, the ones developers want to appeal to, are more interested in games with already established, strong multiplayer modes, with several games behind them showing exactly the same, such as the Call Of Duty Series.
Unfortunately the developers, Crytek, would not be able to justify such a huge project, which turning three games into a single HD Collection is, without evidence that the game would receive enough per-orders and sales to turn a profit for the company. On a personal note, I remember playing all three of these games with my friends fondly, and would even pay extra for a collector’s edition, but I completely respect the decision not to remake these games in HD whilst there is no solid evidence they will make the developers money.
Sadly it seems as though the games developers of today won’t remake the brilliant TimeSplitters series for current generation consoles such as the Playstation 3 or Xbox 360. However, the fact that Crytek were willing to give people a chance to have the series rekindled shows a willingness to invest in it in the future. By this I mean that Crytek is likely to develop an entirely new game, TimeSplitters 4 for the next generation of consoles, the Playstation 4 and the Xbox 720, and possibly even the Nintendo Wii U.