The ongoing financial troubles at Starbreeze Studios led it to sell the System Shock 3 publishing rights back to developer OtherSide Entertainment earlier this year. But OtherSide isn't terribly interested in jumping into the self-publishing game: Creative director Warren Spector told VGC that the studio is on the lookout for a new dance partner, and there's been "a lot of interest" from potential publishers.
"We don’t have a deal right now, but luckily OtherSide is flush enough that we’re funding ourselves and can continue to do that for quite a while. Let’s see what happens," Spector said. "We need somebody to say, 'Yeah, let’s talk deal terms,' and we’re in that kind of discussion with some folks. But we’re not quite finished yet."
OtherSide could, and will, publish the new System Shock itself if it has to, but Spector said doing so would be "a huge distraction," and require hiring new staff with expertise in the field.
"The reality is, OtherSide is a company of developers who want to develop games," he said. "We don’t particularly want to be a publisher. [OtherSide founder] Paul Neurath and I have worked with publishers before, Origin self-published when I was there, and we don’t want to get into the market of distributing stuff."
"We’re not ruling anything out, but at this point we’re looking for a publishing and funding partner."
System Shock 3's release date remains shrouded in mystery, but given the disastrous outcome of OtherSide's previous effort I'm okay with that. To paraphrase Shigeru Miyamoto, a delayed game is eventually good, but a 25/100 review will screw up your Metacritic score forever. On the off-chance you didn't see it, OtherSide released the first System Shock 3 teaser in March.
