The Fight For Melbourne House Is ON

Melbourne House software has been one of the longest standing software developers. Located in my home city it was always worthwhile looking for their name at the start of a game purely for sentimental reasons. Unfortunately, one of the oldest game developers is under threat of going under. Melbourne House has been bought out many times during its long history and has developed dozens of games across nearly all platforms. Their game list includes: Exploding Fist +, KKND, Mechwarrior, NBA Jam, Smash TV, The Way of the Exploding Fist, Xenon. While some of these games are ports from their original versions, they have also been responsible for creating many original titles. I can remember seeing their logo on games from the Commodore 64 days.

Melbourne House have been working on the latest title in the Test Drive franchise, Unlimited. If this game does not have any commerical success then it looks like Melbourne House might be closing its doors. Melbourne House has been responsible for fostering some excellent creative talent in Australia. Unfortunately, there is a growing trend in the gaming industry as developers are unable to cope with the financial burden imposed by the many years of development time required to produce any first class games release. Without ongoing cashflow many developers struggle.

While I am not a fan of episodic games maybe this is the way the industry has to go in order to provide developers the opportunity to create regular income. Businesses require regular income (bread and butter money) to survive. Without this they cannot pay their day-to-day expenses.

It would be a great disappointment to see Melbourne House software go under. I hope they have great success with Test Drive Unlimited and can continue to be one of the oldest software developers in the world.