Atlus and Frozenbyte (developers of the award-winning Trine) today announced a publishing partnership for an as-of-yet unannounced 2011 digital distribution title.
Frozenbyte really did an amazing job on Trine (trailer here) last year, their physics-based platformer game ended being a great and successful game!
“In a short amount of time, Frozenbyte has established itself as a premiere international developer, delivering original, critically-acclaimed interactive entertainment,” stated Tim Pivnicny, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Atlus. “Their last release, the cooperative physics-based action-platformer Trine, achieved arguably more acclaim and success than anybody expected, and left an indelible mark on the industry as to how new technology can help completely redefine a classic gaming genre. We’re incredibly excited for the opportunity to help them bring their next impressive project to the international gaming community.”
“We couldn’t be happier signing our new game with Atlus. As an independent developer we felt that partnering with a publisher who is flexible and shares our vision of the game was the best way to bring the game out to a large audience,” said Lauri Hyvärinen, CEO of Frozenbyte. “We can’t wait to unveil the mystery – I’m confident that we’re creating one of the best titles of 2011!”
Trine was a big hit on the PC, while the PSN version had some distribution and sales trouble:
At the end of the day, Trine lost most of its PSN marketing and launch hype due to the delays, especially in North America. This, in addition to the vastly different release dates and inconsistent pricing across the platforms, undoubtedly affected sales greatly. Even so, Trine is making profit, it surpassed the break-even point a while ago, but this is in many ways thanks to Steam where we self-published Trine.
What to expect? Trine 2 or something completely different? I’m sure something really good will come from this new partnership. More details will be revealed at E3 2010 Expo next week in Los Angeles, California.
