Creative Assembly will focus on strategy games following the cancelation of Hyenas
Sega has confirmed that Total War developer Creative Assembly will return to working on strategy games after the cancellation of its multiplayer shooter Hyenas in September.
The details:
During a financial presentation to investors, Sega CEO Haruki Satomi revealed that the company tried to accelerate Creative Assembly's growth with the development of Hyenas, but ultimately, the studio was working on a game in a genre it was unfamiliar with. The project was then canceled after a public demo and closed testing period as Sega was concerned about potential quality issues due to the developer's lack of experience with multiplayer shooters.
Satomi acknowledged that the game was "good," but Creative Assembly's strengths lay in the offline RTS genre with the Total War series. Following the abrupt cancellation of Hyena, which resulted in significant layoffs at the studio, Sega now plans to "optimize the workflow and concentrate their resources on the development of [Creative Assembly's] specialty genres."
When the project failed, it was revealed that its development had suffered from a severe lack of direction and was claimed to be Sega's "biggest budget game" ever. This included a switch to Unreal Engine after developers encountered problems with the in-house Cathode engine, prompting a portion of the development team to be transferred to the Total War franchise.
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