by Stacy Jones on Jun 17, 2013
Undead Labs had a fairly successful outing with their first game, the sandbox zombie survival horror title known as State of Decay. In its first week of release, the State of Decay became the second fastest selling title on the Xbox Live Arcade with over 250,000 sold, second only to Minecraft. A planned persistent world MMO-like follow-up to the single player State of Decay is planned with the currently codenamed Class4, but that project is still in negotiations to even be developed.
Eurogamer recently spoke with Undead Labs Community Manager Sanya Weathers, who explained that the Class4 follow-up is in negotiations with Microsoft, who now owns the IP (unfortunately) under the publishing agreement with Undead Labs that funded State of Decay's development. Weathers explained that a mutually agreeable contract will have to be negotiated before work can begin on Class4 as well as some other things.
"We have to agree on where we think the technology is going to be in a few years (since the game will take a few years to develop); we have to agree that we have the same goals; and we have to agree on how we'll collectively run and support the final game, Undead Labs Community Manager Sanya Weathers told Eurogamer.
Given the success of State of Decay on the Xbox 360, its likely that if Microsoft decides to go forward with Class4 that they will want to keep it restricted to the upcoming Xbox One as ammunition in the next gen console war, one that Sony seems to be winning in the PR department following E3 2013. While State of Decay is available on the Xbox 360, a PC version is planned for sometime in the future.
Source: Eurogamer