Midway Discusses Revolution, XBLA, Fear & Respect Cancellation

Consumer website GameSpot has conducted an extended interview with Midway Games CEO David Zucker at the company's press day in Los Angeles, in which he reveals that the company has stopped work on new title Fear & Respect, is readying a Nintendo Revolution game for release this year, and is also producing new Xbox 360 Live Arcade titles. Although Midway is not traditionally one of Nintendo’s most prolific third party publishers, the implication is that the unnamed title could be a Revolution exclusive – with other Midway representatives confirming that the game is not a Revolution version of Stranglehold (although that game may appear later on the format). Also confirmed was the cancellation of urban themed title Fear & Respect, which Midway had been developing in conjunction with Boyz n the Hood director John Singleton and rapper Snoop Dogg. The title had already been put back from current generation to next generation formats but has now been put on the “back burner”. Zucker indicated that Midway will continue to work with Singleton and Snoop Dogg on future games, but in a surprisingly frank comment suggested that the game may have been cancelled due to the wide range of similar products currently on shelves. “I think we're at a juncture in the video game business. Everyone's talking about it. How many times are you going to give me the 16th iteration of... I'm not even going to talk about the other products," he said. “The 20th iteration of a driving game isn't going to keep the industry growing.” Finally, Zucker announced that an additional five titles would be released for Xbox 360 download service Xbox Live Arcade, following the success of titles such as Gauntlet and Smash T.V. Coin-op conversions Defender, Paperboy, Root Beer Tapper, Cyberball and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 will all be released on the service in the near future. "We've been generally surprised by the response rate... the paid downloads are more than we expected," Zucker told GameSpot. "It's not going to change our economic success overnight, but it's a nice little business on the side, and we're glad that people are happy with the product." Zucker also apparently indicated interest in providing similar downloads for Nintendo’s virtual console on the Revolution and any similar service offered by the PlayStation 3.