| [News] Spellbound and e.p.i.c. reach comprehensive license agreement | ANN.lu |
| Posted on 16-Aug-2004 07:39 GMT by Thomas Steiding | 32 comments
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Spellbound Entertainment AG and e.p.i.c. interactive entertainment gmbh
have reached a comprehensive license agreement, that will bring many of the popular Spellbound games to other systems like the Apple Macintosh and Linux a.o.. The first title to be ported will be Strategy game "Robin Hood: The Legend of Sherwood", which will initially be released for Apple Macintosh and Linux. Versions for other systems are planned. Further Spellbound titles are to follow soon.
Kehl/ Tübingen 16.8.2004
Spellbound Entertainment and e.p.i.c. interactive to enter license agreement
Spellbound Entertainment AG and e.p.i.c. interactive entertainment gmbh
have reached a comprehensive license agreement, that will bring many of the popular Spellbound games to other systems like the Apple Macintosh and Linux a.o.. The first title to be ported will be Strategy game "Robin Hood: The Legend of Sherwood", which will initially be released for Apple Macintosh and Linux. Versions for other systems are planned. Further Spellbound titles are to follow soon.
"We are very proud to have the chance to cooperate with one of Germanys longest standing developing companies. Finally great Spellbound titles, who all have gathered a large and loyal following, will become available to gamers on other computer systems." said Thomas Steiding, CEO of e.p.i.c. interactive, about the deal.
Armin Gessert, CEO of Spellbound, added:"In e.p.i.c. we have found a competent partner and we are happy that the long neglected users of systems such as Macintosh and Linux will soon be able to play our games too."
More information about "Robin Hood: The Legend of Sherwood" will be available on our website soon.
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| Spellbound and e.p.i.c. reach comprehensive license agreement : Comment 22 of 32 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by takemehomegrandma on 17-Aug-2004 12:51 GMT | In reply to Comment 21 (Christoph Gutjahr):
> You still have to pay licensing fees
"Spellbound Entertainment AG and e.p.i.c. interactive entertainment gmbh have reached a comprehensive license agreement, that will bring many of the popular Spellbound games to other systems like the Apple Macintosh and Linux a.o.."
Do you know the exact terms of this comprehensive license agreement? I don't, but I read the press release as they have a general license that gives e.p.i.c the right to port these games to pretty much any other computer system than Windows, for example Mac and Linux (the biggest), among others. BTW, they posted the PR on this site, didn't they?
> and handle production and distribution of the product.
The fixed costs will undoubtful be carried by the Mac and Linux ports anyway, and I see no real reason to why the cost-per-unit would be any greater for MorphOS than for any other platform?
> Even if the licensing fees are based on the amount of copies sold - why
> should they bother if they sell just a handful of copies?
Well, as I wrote in a post above: "They [e.p.i.c.] are [obviously] still here, and once (if) the MorphOS platform takes off seriously enough to offer a market for third party software producers (like Epic), I am quite confident that we will see these games on MorphOS in no-time".
I was obviously not talking about a handful of copies, and I was not talking about today (even if that *might* happen, who knows? ;-)).
> The ressources spent on an Amiga/MorphOS port could be used elsewhere, and
> they would generate more revenue that way.
E.p.i.c obviously have a model that makes it really easy for them to port games to a large amount of platforms. First they put down some one-time efforts and resources to adapt the game to their "game engine". That is the hard and expensive part. When that part is done, there will probably be quite easy and cheap to get it running on any of the platforms (probably even small ones) on which their "engine" runs, of which MorphOS is one.
In order for this model to pay off in its fullest, it would make sense to use it on as many platforms as possible. If only the platform specific costs (which could be quite low, for what I know) can brake even on its own merits (the sales from that platform), it will mean that any surplus from there on will help covering the "one-time adapting effort".
While undoubtfully some resources needs to be spent to make a MorphOS specific port of a game (as well as developing/maintaining the MorphOS "engine"), I doubt that we are talking about *huge* amounts of manpower and financial resources here. AFAIK, e.p.i.c already have a few games ported to MorphOS, and this way they have a small product portfilio ready the day (if the day will come) MorphOS takes off seriously, on whatever product. When/if that day comes, e.p.i.c. will find themselves in a monopoly situation on that market, thanks to their unique porting model. And I doubt that the cost and risc e.p.i.c has put down in MorphOS so far has been extreme in any way, much thanks to the model they are using. |
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