Topic: Franchise/Character question

[PIAC]

im posting it here as really other than general discussion this is probably the best spot for it.

have any companies ever sold characters to other companies? like nintendo selling mario to sega for example, has any of that ever gone on?  

[Uncle Rich AiAi]

I think Capcom has bought some of the Final Fight characters from SNK.  Correct me if I'm wrong.

[rpglover]

well i know of one that some know and some dont
nintendo at one point during the whole cd add on thing for the snes sold the ZELDA licence to phillips so they could make ZELDA games for their system (longer story than that)
what came out were 2 horrible, horrible, craptacular, pieces of crap, horrid, bad, bad games that did no justice to the name ZELDA
it was imbarrassing for nintendo to say the least

[PIAC]

yeah i know about those, but they still owned the franchise outright, what i ment was full SELLING of the licence as in the original creators had nothing todo with it anymore. say for example konami decided they were sick of making castlevania games anymore and decided hey sega would do a good job, hey sega give us $3 dollars and you can have the Castlevania licence no questions asked.

[rpglover]

the original legacy of kain: blood omen was made and produced by silicon knights but that franchise later ended up in the hands of eidos and crystal dynamics
i am not sure what happened there but i would guess it was given up by silicon knights after they were bought out by nintendo

[KDR_11k]

Usually developers have to sell their franchises to their publishers. That means if the publisher doesn't want you anymore, they can make the sequel without you.

[BlkPaladin]

It usally doesn't happen. They can license them out for awhile but usally put heavy rules on how they can be used. The only time they sell them if they go defunt. As when Atari, and SNK went they sold alot of their properties. (I think SNK may be kicking themselves right now...)

[Mario]

You mean like Nintendo selling the Bond license to EA?

[oohhboy]

No. Rare at the time had decided not to renew the lease to the lisence, so it was leased to someone.

[KnowsNothing]

what were the two phillips games? any information?  i had never heard of them until i read about them on another thread.  here they are again.  please, fill me in on this.

[rpglover]

sony and nintendo were in talks of making a cd add on for the super nintendo dubbed the "playstation" and at a trade show (i forget when) sony announced their partnership with nintendo
then the very next day at the show nintendo reps came on and backstabbed sony by announcing a partnership with phillips
phillips then was going to make the cd add on for the snes and sony was completely out of the deal
there is a little more to it than that- it had to do with contract deals and nintendo liked phillip's better than sony's
so after it was announced, nintendo basically allowed the zelda licence to go to the hands of phillips to make their own games for their system
nintendo broke away from phillips then, but they continued on the games and finished them
the zelda games made by phillips were horrible and they were released on the system of phillips: the phillips cd-i
the one was called the wand of gamelon, another was called the faces of evil, and the last was zelda's adventure
i have only played wand of gamelon and it was a sidescroller but it played craptacularly- the control was unresponsive and it was just not fun
i heard the other titles were bad as well
there is more to the story but thats the basics of it- i think egm had a magazine highlighting these games as some of the worst ever

[BrianSLA]

>> You mean like Nintendo selling the Bond license to EA? <<

Nintendo / Rare NEVER owned the James Bond license. Bond belongs to MGM / UA / Danjaq - the creators of James Bond. They let developers develop Bond games but they would NEVER EVER EVER EVER sell the James Bond license to anyone. It is too much of a cash cow for them and they go to extremes to protect it. They sued Sony for even contemplating making another James Bond movie based on Thunderball.  

[Termin8Anakin]

You mean another, OTHER sequel to Thunderball, AFTER Never Say Never Again?

Damn, the battle to make Never Say Never Again went on since after Thunderball was released! Damn!
That's bloody stupid of Sony!

I mean, sinking some form of missile carrying transport, stealing it's contents then holding the world/government/country/person/building/game console/whatever hostage is soo overused in movies today, I don't think anyone would even bother watching it.

If Rare didn't pass on Bond, we would still be getting Bond exclusive (which is good), but then we wouldn't have gotten any other new games, since rare would be stuck making Bond (which is bad), but ALSO, since Rare went to M$, Bond would then be exclusive to Xbox (which is even worse!!!).

I don't think Nintendo would ever sell their characters outright, only lend them to others to free their resources, like they do now.