All eyes may be on Duke Nukem Forever these days but Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford says the studio remains “very, very committed” to Aliens: Colonial Marines.
It’s kind of embarrassing to admit, but I’d forgotten all about Aliens: Colonial Marines, the squad-based FPS Sega unveiled almost three years ago. There certainly haven’t been many reasons to remember it: The latest news on Sega’s Aliens website is dated from March 2008 and a search for Colonial Marines on the main site turns up a big fat zero. But the project isn’t dead, according to Pitchford, Sega just seriously jumped the gun with the announcement.
“We’re very, very committed to Aliens: Colonial Marines and we’re very excited about that project,” Pitchford told NowGamer at a Duke Nukem event in the U.K. “I know it’s been ‘radio silent’ for long and we know that must be frustrating for some people, but the game was announced too soon.”
“There was so much excitement and I know a lot has changed at Sega, but they were very excited, they did the deal with Fox and before the ink was even dry they issued a press release announcing it,” he continued. “At the time we hadn’t written a single line of code yet. It takes time to build games, but it’s going great and I’m very excited about it. It won’t be long before we break radio silence and we’re able to show it.”
Pitchford said that more than 200 people are employed at Gearbox, while “at any given moment” another 100 to 200 people outside the studio are also working with it. “Duke Nukem Forever is consuming about 70 staff, so there’s still a huge amount of push power behind our other projects,” he added. He did not, however, offer any kind of update to Sega’s original, long-overdue launch target of late 2008.
