Krome Studios

It's starting to feel like the good 'ole days again! This week, we've seen the return of Dimsdale & Kreozot, Infinite Interactive, and now it's Krome Studios' turn to make a reappearance.

They've reopened their website which, for the past year or so, sat dormant displaying just the Krome Studios logo. The new site has had a design makeover and gives a glance of the smaller-scaled titles they've been involved with since their notorious collapse in late 2010.

The website also gives a small teaser of what's to come from Krome - expect to see the return of Ty, the Tasmanian Tiger, their breakout title which propelled the small Brisbane Studio to greater numbers and bigger things ten years ago.

Krome Studios’ Full House Poker has been voted the Runner Up in TrueAchievements.com’s Game of the Year in the “Best Card & Board Game” Category.

This is TrueAchievements.com second annual “Game of the Year” voting, and this year over 135,000 total votes were cast by their international community in twenty categories.

Krome Studios has several up and coming games in the mobile space, including Toy Soldiers 2: Boot Camp, which is being featured on Microsoft’s Must-HaveGames promotion for Windows Phone in February.

Full House Poker has also been listed as the top selling Xbox Live Arcade title in 2011. It has sold in excess of 375,000 Units, bringing in $3.6 Million USD (at $9.66 ASP), according to Computerandvideogames.com

Yes, it's all getting a bit confusing.

Cast your minds back to mid-October last year when news had spread rapidly that Australia's largest games developer, Krome Studios, were closing their doors and letting go of their staff. This meant the end of Krome Studios Melbourne as well as their main hub of operations in Brisbane. The rumours concluded that a small amount of contractors were continuing on to finish off remaining projects. All the following corroborating comments from ex-Krome staff and those in-the-know implied that it was indeed true.

A month after the news had circulated, Andrew McMillen for IGN AU conducted an interview with Krome Studios CEO, Robert Walsh, on the demise of Krome Studios. Remarkably, Walsh countered the circulated reports that Krome Studios were closing up by saying that they were still seeking projects and even had the potential to expand up to a hundred staff. They were down to 40 staff for the time being, however, and were now "focusing more on social, casual and digital stuff" rather than developing console titles aimed for the shelf which they're more known for. The company at this point was renamed from "Krome Technologies Pty Ltd" to "Fortitude Technologies Pty Ltd" but was still trading as Krome Technologies.

Some may have noticed that Krome Studios was listed for a few products after their 2010 mid-October "closure". There were three Game Room Game Packs (011, 012, and 013), released during mid-November to mid-December of last year. And surprisingly, Krome Studios is also credited for a soon-to-be released new game called Toy Soldiers: Boot Camp. From the blog of Microsoft Xbox Live Director of Programming, Major Nelson, on the Xbox 360 related releases shown at last week's New York Comic Convention 2011...

"Toy Soldiers: Boot Camp" – shipping this fall by Signal Studios and Krome Studios. Wage war on a tiny scale in "Toy Soldiers: Boot Camp" which brings the fun and addictive shooting gallery mini-games from "Toy Soldiers: Cold War" exclusively to your Windows Phone! Additionally, earn bragging rights in Cold War on Xbox 360 through an integrated mobile leaderboard

Toy Soldiers: Boot Camp looks to be the mobile version of the XBox Live Arcade title, Toy Soldiers: Cold War which was developed by Seattle based Signal Studios. We're guessing that Krome Studios was given the project to port over the shooting gallery mini-game aspect of the original title to the Windows Phone platform. With its release date fairly imminent (Fall in the U.S), we're assuming that development for this project is practically done.

So what does this all mean? Is this a sign that Krome Studios is still kicking around and trying to secure and complete projects as their CEO had indicated late last year? Unfortunately, maybe not. We had a search on Fortitude Technologies on the Australian Securities & Investments Commission (ASIC) website to see what their records are. Here are some of the details from the resulting page.

18/10/2011 027767795 Not Imaged 524J Presentation of Accounts & Statement Accounts of Creditors'
11/02/2011 027502758 2 506E Notification of Change of Address of Liquidator
05/11/2010 7E3278074 6 5011A Copy of Minutes of Meeting of Members, Creditors,

It would appear that, apart from being assigned a liquidator sometime earlier this year, Fortitude Technologies (trading as Krome Studios) submitted today a 524 Presentation of Accounts form which is used specifically by an administrator, liquidator, or controller. Searching the "524J" code brings up many results on esearch.net.au describing this as a "Voluntary Winding Up" procedure.

Games On Net have an article on the games that were developed by Krome Studios over the years that remained unpublished and unfinished. These games were were developed as proposals for the studio to show off to publishers. While some were eventually greenlighted (like Ty, the Tasmanian Tiger, for example), many were pushed aside or placed on the backburner when paid contract games work took preference. All was not lost though, as in some cases, the work put into these prototypes was later re-used for other games.

Steve Stamatiadis, the Creative Director at Krome Studios, gives a description and backstory to these never-before-seen productions, as well as the reasons to why some of them never got the green light to become full-fledged games. These prototypes range in development from the early days of Krome Studios when they were better known as Gee Whiz! Entertainment, right up to the studio's demise late last year. They are:

Katburgler - a 60's themed female spy action game which failed to secure a publisher due to other titles in the market.
TY: Gunyip - a free-roaming air combat game set in the universe of TY, The Tasmanian Tiger which was partly developed by the former Atari Studio in Melbourne. It was push aside for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed contract work.
Surface Tension - a PS2 title that was a cross between Pikmin and Populous which was abandoned when the team moved to next-gen development.
Carpe Noctum - a multiplayer, steampunk-era action game where characters fight demons
Project ACLAND - a gory game title that would have pushed the games classification bar in Australia

When asked if Steve will return to making games, he responded to Games On Net...

“The industry is really screwed,” he says, laughing bitterly. “Getting stuff done is really hard at the best of times, and... it’s not the best of times. But I’m do have some ideas, maybe something for iPad. I’ve got some great ideas for adventure games. We’ll have to see what happens.”

For the full feature, head on over to Games On Net.

The report of Krome Studios closure last month also came with the news that the deal announced two months ago with Gamebryo middleware developer, Emergent Game Technologies, to share engine technology and the efforts of engineering teams was hitting some trouble is now being confirmed by a report on Gamasutra.

The CEO of Emergent, Scott Johnson, acknowledges a change in plans and that the agreement with Krome Studios has come to a "sudden and unexpected halt" in light of the recent troubles at Krome. From Gamasutra...

(Scott Johnson) Our strategic initiative with Krome was showing great promise, but has unfortunately come to a sudden and unexpected halt. Certainly our roadmap has been affected and we are re-evaluating our plans...

It’s always difficult to watch as companies scale back and talented people lose their jobs, and our industry has witnessed more than its fair share recently.

IGN have a feature up covering the fall of Australia's largest game development studio, Krome Studios. With the contribution of several anonymous ex-Krome employees, the article paints a picture of a company that had so much talent and potential, but squandered its chances on tightly budgeted licensed titles hurried out to meet short development schedules. It meant little time for the polish needed for their games which unfortunately reflected in their metacritic scores, the standard of which many publishers abide by.

The focus of work-for-hire for Krome Studios ensured that it was vulnerable to the global financial crisis and effects of the Aussie dollar reaching parity. And after three major projects were cancelled or put on hold, and with numerous delays on publisher sign offs on further projects, Krome was forced to gradually reduce its staff from a four hundred strong workforce last year to just roughly 40 or so contract employees.

However, for Krome Studios co-founder and CEO, Robert Walsh, they held onto staff as long as they could, much to their detriment. Responding to IGN for the feature...

(Robert Walsh) One of the things that Krome's done over the years is that we've tried to keep staff on as long as possible, when we didn't necessarily have paying work. To be really honest, that's pretty much led to our current position. We probably kept 100, 120 people on, waiting for work to come in...

...we were just carrying too many people for too long, waiting for publishers to make up their minds.

When put forward the common question on whether Krome had concentrated too much on licensed titles and not on original I.P, Robert Walsh argues that it did not suit a large game company like Krome Studios with the hundreds of employees they had...

(Robert Walsh) tell me, what original IP has been successful in the last 12 months? The original IP that's been most successful is Shainiel [Deo] at Halfbrick with his mobile games [like Fruit Ninja], and Rob at Firemint with Flight Control. But you don't need a hundred people to make fruit or flight.

So what now for Krome? Despite what numerous ex-Krome Studios employees have said, Robert denies the Krome is going through any closure. However, the CEO admits that "our business model doesn't work" and that the future for Krome is towards digital and social games, and away from boxed retail product. This means a smaller, tighter number of developers working on smaller games. There is hope to bring in more employees once further contracts are green lighted.

The article ends with a sombre warning by an ex-Krome employee for other local developers to take heed from Krome's mistakes...

"Hopefully other developers can learn [from Krome] how critical it is to always find time to invest in original IP. Chasing the quick buck is a short-sighted goal, regardless of the fluctuation of the Australian dollar. It was foolish to rely on cheap, licensed titles to build the local industry." — Ex-Krome Employee

One of the common questions raised after the news of Krome Studios' impending closure is what will become of the Game Room arcade. Krome took on the task for Microsoft of creating and updating Game Room, an online arcade space for Xbox 360 and PC with regular releases of downloadable retro games. It offered online multiplayer, cross platform leaderboards, voice chat, the ability to view other player replays, medals and achievements, and was launched on March 24, this year.

The Game Room has met with a rather mixed reaction from gamers who had issues with the service ranging from the delays in game pack releases, the pricing for game packs, and the lack of real arcade hits on offer. Extremely obscure Intellivision and Atari 2600 titles did little to whet the appetites of arcade fans who were promised the chance to "relive the glory days of classic arcade games in their original forms". However, considering that arcade publishers could release their retro games on Xbox Live Arcade for a much higher price than licensing it to Game Room, it could very well be the main reason why Game Room has a considerable lack of big arcade titles on offer.

While Krome Studios has managed to release the latest Game Pack this week (Game Pack 11 which includes one solitary Konami arcade title called Jackal), Denton Arcade Game Examiner is reporting that Krome has already finished Game Pack 12 and 13, which is set to include Sunset Riders, Galaxian, and Double Dragon). They report that the future of Game Room will continue and that Microsoft will be handing over its development to another company.