There are so many great unmined Intellectual Properties out there that could be leveraged for games.
My excitement about license treatments is tempered by the inarguable fact that most license treatments suck (Traveller's Tales, please reverse the curse of the Batman).
But for shortcomings like Aquaman, at least there are things like Marvel: Ultimate Alliance -- proving the rule doesn't have to be sucky license treatments.
I'm curious to see how Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment's Stargate Worlds turns out, and it's good that Funcom's Age of Conan has just been greenlighted for Xbox 360.
And now SEGA, who is producing some top-notch software lately, has announced they'll be giving the Fox Aliens franchise the silicon screen treatment. "[T]itles, including a first-person shooter and a role playing game, are currently in pre-production" -- though I'm a little bummed that (1) the first title won't be be released until 2009, and (2) the licensing doesn't include the Aliens versus Predator (or just Predator) licenses.
20th Century Fox Licensing & Merchandising has been busy, and I'm probably most excited about Joss Whedon's cult classic Firefly (canceled before its time) moving beyond the feature film and comic books into gaming. The Multiverse Network announced it's attained the rights to develop an MMO game based on Firefly, and is targeting a 2008 release, pending a developer being named.
Multiverse is a little different in that they create MMO middleware, which they then license to developers who use the technology to make games. Multiverse makes money off of revenue sharing with the developers. They've got about 15 games claiming development, and when I saw their stuff at the 2006 Austin Game Conference, I was impressed by how polished stuff built on the middleware can look.
No word yet on a Transformers MMO, unfortunately.
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