Crimson Skies Revival May Be On The Way

Back before Halo 2 came along, Crimson Skies: The High Road to Revenge was one of the best reasons to invest in an Xbox Live membership. And before that, it was an underappreciated PC game. It's been several years now since the latest video game iteration of Crimson Skies, but FASA Corporation founder Jordan Weisman hasn't forgotten about it. In fact, it looks like we'll soon be seeing a revival.
"I think Crimson Skies is something we'd love to get some energy around, and we have some devious plans - we'll see if those materialize," Weisman told GameSpot.

Weisman recently founded Smith & Tinker, which has joined with Piranha Games to develop a reboot of the classic MechWarrior franchise on the PC and Xbox 360. The deal that saw Weisman pick up MechWarrior from Microsoft included Shadowrun and Crimson Skies as well, giving Weisman access to them until 2015.

"I wanted to start with MechWarrior, because it really struck me as the one that had the largest existing fan base and it had been the longest since a MechWarrior title was done right," he said.

"Most of my time is invested in [Smith & Tinker], but in the wee hours of the night, I spend time thinking about the older properties."

But while Crimson Skies may be returning soon, Shadowrun fans will likely have to wait a little while before their favorite franchise returns to video games. According to Weisman, "Shadowrun was recently...not treated well...shall we say, so the thought was let a little time pass before approaching that one again."

Weisman has wanted to return to Crimson Skies for a while now. When we asked him about his plans for the franchise back in 2008, he said, "I'm absolutely confident [it will return], because I want to play it ... and that's why I worked with Microsoft to buy Crimson Skies, and then licensed MechWarrior and Shadowrun back."

"I really love those properties, and I want to see them treated right -- and they were just going to sit there in the vault and grow dust, so I bought them and licensed them back from Microsoft so we can make some cool stuff."

"I think, due to the way that Microsoft Game Studios had grown and contracted -- and, you know, the kind of chaos that takes place inside of a publisher that's redefining itself on a regular basis -- I think they just got kind of lost in the noise."

"They're good franchises. They have very respectable -- or, in the case of MechWarrior, record-setting -- sales histories, and I think they just needed someone who's going to be able to give them more love and attention."

Whenever Crimson Skies and Shadowrun do return, it appears that Smith & Tinker will be taking the same approach that they did with MechWarrior in parceling them out to other developers.

"The older properties -- MechWarrior, Crimson Skies, Shadowrun, those kinds of things -- those are kind of grandfathered in," Weisman said.

"They're not really what we're all about, and we won't be developing and publishing those ourselves as a result. We'll be, like we are now, talking to other publishers and finding good homes for those, but they're not what Smith & Tinker at its core is about."