Developer Rare’s Nick Burton has voiced his disappointment at not being able to bring the N64 classic to XBLA despite the game being almost complete.
Speaking at the Develop conference to VideoGamer.com he said it’s ”kind of locked in this no man’s land.” Microsoft and Nintendo can’t reach an agreement for one thing.
”That was a tricky one. To be fair, I kind of wished that the differences got sorted out, but obviously there’s the licensing issue for Bond, even if it’s something that’s already come out,” said Burton, a senior software engineer over at Rare. ”It’s incredibly hard to solve because there’s so many licence holders involved. You’ve got the guys that own the license to the gaming rights now, the guys that have the licence to Bond as an IP, and there are umpteen licensees.”
”It’s what it’s like as a games developer,” he continued to explain. ”You have to treat something that’s not seen the light of day as a prototype. I’ve had, what, four or five things that never happened. It’s funny that we don’t even talk about them a lot of the time, because you think, well, we might revisit it.”
Unfortunately he wasn’t able to spread about much optimism for the future of an XBLA Goldeneye, except to say it will probably go down ”as one of the big mysteries” of our industry. Damn the lawyers!
”The ball’s not in anybody at Rare’s court really. It’s squarely in the license holders’ courts. It’s a shame. It’s kind of locked in this no man’s land. There’s nothing on LIVE Arcade, there’s nothing on Wii.”
”It’s just what happens legally sometimes. Not necessarily with games, but you see it with music and films. Things get locked in this legal limbo. Even most of the parties involved, probably all the parties involved want to solve it. It’s such a complex issue.”
Source: VideoGamer.com