Slightly similar to the deal EA had with Valve for the Xbox version of Half-Life 2, Namco Bandai and Electronic Arts have entered into a co-publication deal for Flagship Studios’ highly anticipated Action/RPG Hellgate: London, set to ship in 2007. EA will handle the game’s marketing, sales and distribution, while Namco Bandai will concentrate on expanding the game’s branding with the possibility of toy, manga, novel and other merchandising, letting Flagship do their development thing in the meantime. According to the press release, the agreement will not affect Flagship’s granting rights to Namco Bandai to publish future Hellgate: London games. And no, John Madden does NOT appear in the game as one of the final bosses…
Yep, before anyone gets a knee-jerk reaction about the publishing deal, just realize that it’s the same deal Valve has with EA. They’re completely hands-off in regards to development.
heh- oh, i’m sure only the folks on certain message board sites who don’t know any better because they can’t tell a developer from a publisher from a distributor will get angry for no good reason… ;^)