Topic: Haven Canned for GameCube and Xbox

[Jonnyboy117]

The rumors are true.

Several media outlets recently reported that Midway's Haven: Call of the King, developed by Traveller's Tales, had been canceled for GameCube.  Today Midway confirmed the reports to us, saying that both the GameCube and Xbox versions were originally planned but have since been nixed.

There is no official explanation of the cancellation, but the company likely decided that the ports wouldn't be profitable.  The original PS2 version faced poor sales amidst the holiday onslaught of titles, despite some critical acclaim.

[nitsu niflheim]

Must have sucked on the PS2 if it didn't sell.  Kind of kills the theory that if it's on the PS2 then it will sell like hot cakes.  The GNC, or any other system for that matter, doesn't need any more crappy games.

[RickPowers]

Well, there's another possibility.  That the potential userbase for Haven had quite a bit of crossover with the GameCube and Xbox owners, and they chose to wait to see it on those machines, making the PS2 version's sales suffer.

[Jonnyboy117]

Actually, the most likely reason is that the game just didn't sell well enough on PS2, and it had such a high budget to begin with, the financially weak Midway didn't want to take the risk of what would end up being expensive ports to GC and Xbox.

And don't assume that games with poor sales were just bad games.  That's not necessarily true on any system, even the PS2.  Haven was released right in the middle of the holiday rush with relatively little marketing.  It's also a kind of multi-genre game whose gameplay is difficult to encapsulate to casual gamers.  The lesson to be learned here is that publishers should release games throughout the year, not just at the holidays.  Hopefully Zelda will sell extremely well in March and begin to lend legitimacy to this tactic.

[Mingesium]

The game sold terrible. It sold like 10,000 on the PS2.  I could see why Midway would not release the game for XBox and GCN. I think that Midway should have given XBox and GCN a chance and release the game when their isn't a lot of competition. The XBox and GCN version would have sold more copies and decrease the amount of money they would have lost.