As reported by our sister site Time Extension earlier in the week, the whereabouts of hard drives containing the all-powerful source code for a number of Transformer games was initially in dispute, with both Activision and Hasbro representatives pointing the finger at the other. Some of the games in question were pretty good, too, and our story today concerns Transformers: War for Cybertron, Transformers: Fall of Cybertron, Transformers: Rise of the Dark Spark, and Transformers: Devastation.
Die-hard Hasbro enthusiasts have been holding out hope the Activision buyout might mean these games could live again on Xbox Game Pass. In an interview with Transformers World, a Hasbro representative made some frankly legendary comments in response to a question asking if Activision might re-release these games, stating:
"Sadly, apparently, Activision’s not sure what hard drives they’re on in their building. When a company eats a company that eats a company, things get lost, and that’s very frustrating. Hope is that now that the deal is moving forward with Microsoft and Xbox they’ll go through all of the archives and every hard drive to find it all because it’s an easy Game Pass add. We want those games back up for people to have a chance to play."
Word got out, and sites started picking up the news. Then, in a dramatic escalation from the anonymous to the highly visible, outspoken Activision Blizzard exec Lulu Cheng Meservey fired back on X, writing: "These headlines are wrong. We have the code; it's not lost and never was."
Hasbro representative #1's day was likely already ruined at this point, but it likely got worse when the company distanced itself from the original statement. Another Hasbro representative contacted Axios' Stephen Totilo, who was told, "To clarify, comments that suggest Transformers games have been lost were made in error. We apologize to Activision and regret any confusion. They’ve been great partners, and we look forward to future opportunities to work together."
We imagine tense words were exchanged between everyone involved's respective PR agencies. Did you expect to find Transformers at the centre of a battle of corporate words? Who wants to bet someone at Hasbro, after frantic searching, found the dust-covered drive behind the break-room sofa? Get lost in the comments section below.
[source timeextension.com, via gamesradar.com, twitter.com]
Comments 30
Hasbro rep, ‘Yeah, I know where the front door is. I’ll show myself out’.
I mean, I'll still take any excuse to blame Activision because big corpo bad and bigger corpo worse.
Given the fountain of misinformation Ms Lulu has been as Bobby Kotick's mouthpiece throughout the antitrust proceedings I'd check for storms if she said the weather was sunny outside!😂
Still,all this has been rather moot in its only suddenly gained attention as a push for gamepass fodder rather than restoring it as the multiformat release that it actually was!🙄
Recall it did get a perfunctory port on ps4 but as was typical Activision given a high price point & never saw a deep discount before being delisted in the first place!
We didn’t lose the hard drives containing the source code…. we destroyed them for ***** and giggles at our annual executive retreat😈
Maybe the hard drives were in their robot form and completely incognito. Had to wait for them to transform back before they could plug them in and check
Was this a pro-level move on Hasbro's part to get Activision to confirm publicly that they have the games code AND to gauge public excitement for their potential re-release? Free marketing. Either two steps ahead or two steps behind
Oops, someone said the truth!
Off you go.
Although highly doubtful given the Microsoft purchase, I’d be well up for a remastered collection on ps5.
@colonelkilgore Luckily, Transformer is a 3rd party IP, and anything Microsoft want to do with these games has to go through Hasbro… Hopefully, Hasbro cares more for multiplaform legacy of their games than Disney.
That's good to hear as I enjoyed some of them back in the day.
I don't think I would buy them again, but if they get add to the monthly subscription I will definitely play them.
@Robocod To make these games available on Xbox there would be almost no work, back compat update, they would need to port everything to PlayStation 4/5.
@AverageGamer Microsoft needs only licenses and publisher agreedment to put It on Xbox back compat, or do u think they would spend time making a new port of these games? Microsoft is not Sony they usually do a remaster after 10 years but even that IS only for their big games.
@MaikonCSGarcia Yes,they originally were on PS3/360,but Fall of Cybertron (sadly don't think War for Cybertron got one),did get a basic,no frills port onto PS4.
So it would be possible in theory with a licence to release...but given Microsoft's looming takeover,any possibilities of re-release or even releasing the old gen versions onto those territories that have PS Premium streaming (only Deluxe in my neck of the woods),would be unlikely given Phil Spencer's recent track record.
Considering how I'm on a bit of a PS3 buying spree as of late anyway, I may as well try and add these ones to my collection (even if I've never been too into Transformers) if the owners are going to be this potentially incompetent about keeping their code in one piece.
It's sad how many rumors start like this. Was the employee looking for attention or just completely unaware of the truth? It was fishy that one hasbro employee would speak for all of Activision and claim that not a single person at either company knows where the files are stored.
This is all corporate speak. We all know Unicron ate those games.
@Robocod There are a lot of Bethesda games going into PS Premium, i dont think they would do dev work for these titles, but If they already paid license to Hasbro and release the games through backwards compatibility, If Sony paid for It, cause nothing is free especially for your competitor's streaming service), i think they would license the game to PS Premium, Sony would Just need to pay for It, like they do with any other game on the service.
I better see these games brought back, then. War for Cybertron and Fall of Cybertron are far, far too good not to be widely available especially this day and age with the tech that we have.
transformers devastation is one of the best action game I ever played. Def top 3 platinum game
I doubt ABK will bother renewing that licensing agreement, ever. But this is all about a potential post-acquisition move. At that point, it's all on MS to decide if they want to invest on PS4/5 ports of these games. I doubt they will, this will likely be "stuck" on Xbox and PC (Microsoft Store and Steam)
@MaikonCSGarcia Think Fall of Cybertron, Last Spark and Devastation are all realistic to be re-listed for PS4 if MS signs a licensing agreement, as well as some of the movie tie-ins. But I doubt MS will invest on porting any game that is locked on the PS3 to modern consoles. Only see the doing that for Xbox.
They might re-list them on PS3 and agree with Sony for them to work via streaming on PSN Extra, though....
This seemingly has nothing to do with Sony so why are we talking about it.
@MaikonCSGarcia There seems to be a big enough want and fan base for these older game to maybe do something more than just a back compact version of the game. Activision will still be somewhat of an independent subsidiary under Microsoft, so it depends on if they to push for a remaster. But Phil also noted that they wanted to revive some of these older games, and pull some studio off of CoD cough High Moon Studios Please cough
But the thing about licensing agreements is that Hasbro can easily push for a PS5 remaster of these games as stipulation for Microsoft to relist them on Xbox. I mean, look at Sony and MLB, if they want to keep using the license. They now have to spend money on making the game for Xbox.
This is why it important we hope that Hasbro cares more for the multiplaform legacy of their games, so we don't end up with an Indiana Jones, Spider-Man, and Wolverine situation (F u Disney)
@Dragonsbane literally, none of that is ever gonna happen. I didn’t think people would write fan fiction over a rumor tweet. thanks for letting me know, the world still has surprises left.
You know they could re-release them on the ps3 and bill gates will let everyone use his back to the future Delorian and then we get to play them natively and don’t even have to port.
Countless games, especially ones prior to the 2000s just straight up have their source codes gone forever. Diablo, Final Fantasy 8, Blood, etc. are just a few famous examples. Much like movies prior to the 1930s people weren't all that fussed about preserving media.
@AverageGamer In this case it is an investment that Microsoft does not like to make, they prefer to work with their own IP's, and that was what Phil Spencer was talking about when he mentioned bringing old IP's back, he wasn't referring to third-party IP's, but to Activision-Blizzard's IP's.
Re-licensing a game to just put it in backward compatibility is cheap and easy, porting it to new generations is expensive and takes time, all of this being invested in the IP of other companies and that would have to be multiplat, when these Studios could bê used to created Xbox owned IP that can be exclusives.
@Dragonsbane Yes, It could, and as i have Said, as long as Sony pays for It Microsoft IS open to put their old games on PS+
@MaikonCSGarcia Yet Activision is talking about bring back toys to life after the purchase which is a larger investment than porting some old games to newer hardware.
@Floki Bobby Kotick said that, the guy that probably will leave the company after the acquisition is finished and could have done it if they believed in the IP's.
And again, their own IP vs a third-party IP, Microsoft gets to sell merchandising (toys, backpacks, books, notebooks, pens, clothes, etc) in their own IP, like they do with Halo, Minecraft, Skyrim, Banjo, SoT, etc. They can't do that with Transformers.
It's not as big as CoD, also why risk wasting time on IP's, that following your hypothesis, should be cross-platform. Any first-party IP, makes more sense as multiplat, when compared to a third-party IP.
Not something that Microsoft would usually do, Gears/Fable fans are begging for remasters for years and they still not doing it.
Oooohhh. Hope they remaster War for Cybertron and Fall of cybertron for PS4 and PS5. They’d be a day one for me for sure, never got round to getting the re-release for Fall of cybertron as it was always too expensive. I got the two marvel ultimate alliance games though. Hope they get remasters also
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