Backbreaker News Post

Backbreaker Developer: "Very Unlikely That We Will Revisit Full-On Football Again"

04:13 PM - October 7, 2011 by Steve_OS

Late Thursday night, a user on the Backbreaker forums posted a correspondence via private messaging with the head developer of the Backbreaker franchise, Todd Gibbs:

Quote:


	Unfortunately, and unofficially, it is very unlikely that we will revisit BB/full-on football again. The company has changed direction and is currently not looking at console game. I'll try to get the guys to do something more official and post on the forum. Thanks for all your support over the years, its been fun Todd

As of Friday morning, the official Backbreaker forums are down for maintenance, but the original post can still be seen via Google's cache feature.

If this is in fact the end of Backbreaker on consoles, at least the series retired a winner, with June's stellar Backbreaker: Vengeance, still available on Xbox Live Arcade, and on Playstation 3 in the PAL region.

Game: BackbreakerReader Score: 6/10 - Vote Now
Platform: PS3 / Xbox 360Votes for game: 51 - View All

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Member Comments

# 1 LingeringRegime @ 10/07/11 05:28 PM

Save us Virtual Concepts you are our only hope.

# 2 BEARYChi @ 10/07/11 07:21 PM

Madden needs competition,starting with EA Sports sharing the NFL license.

# 3 StL_RamZ @ 10/07/11 07:32 PM

This is such a huge disappointment..I thought this was going to be the "madden killer"

Thanks EA for ruinning another great company that released football games

EA: 2

Others: 0

# 4 1WEiRDguy @ 10/07/11 07:34 PM

sad day in the world of gaming

# 5 jagsrock95 @ 10/07/11 09:13 PM

not surprised at all. As much as I love the technology behind Backbreaker the game it's self was very uninspired and the developers seemed very content with making mini games as opposed to a full fledge product. But sad indeed...there was so much potential here =(

# 6 PaleVermilion @ 10/08/11 03:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by StL_RamZ


	This is such a huge disappointment..I thought this was going to be the "madden killer" Thanks EA for ruinning another great company that released football games EA: 2 Others: 0

This is not EA's fault. Come on. NaturalMotion dug their own grave with releasing a game that wasn't quite ready, releasing a patch that then broke their not ready game, and failed to support it further.

# 7 FroznYogurt @ 10/08/11 12:20 PM

Ahh, what a shame. I remember the world of potential this game had when it was first released. Unfortunately, it never panned out.

# 8 nolesfan69 @ 10/09/11 01:30 PM

Come on Tecmo!

# 9 dcal @ 10/09/11 01:49 PM

My wishful thinking hope:
Natural Motion is licensing the base code and Euphoria engine for Backbreaker to a third party company making a football game, and part of the agreement is that Natural Motion kill off Backbreaker full on football as we know it.

One can dream right? It is amazing that they would just squash something that had so much promise.

# 10 K0ZZ @ 10/09/11 02:30 PM

How is it EA's fault that a terrible football game failed?

It didn't even feel like football, football logic didn't work and it was all based around arcade gameplay. It wasn't about to compete with Madden, maybe Blitz the League, or the orginal blitzes, but it was never a sim game.

Yeah it had a lot of potential but they didn't put the effort and let it collapse. Which is sad because a physics based football game that actually came out good would be beautiful.

# 11 LingeringRegime @ 10/09/11 03:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by chicagopax


	How is it EA's fault that a terrible football game failed? It didn't even feel like football, football logic didn't work and it was all based around arcade gameplay. It wasn't about to compete with Madden, maybe Blitz the League, or the orginal blitzes, but it was never a sim game. Yeah it had a lot of potential but they didn't put the effort and let it collapse. Which is sad because a physics based football game that actually came out good would be beautiful.

Who said it was EA's fault?

# 12 mestevo @ 10/09/11 03:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DEFTFUNDAMENTALZ


	Who said it was EA's fault?

This isn't a very big thread...

Quote:

Originally Posted by StL_RamZ


	This is such a huge disappointment..I thought this was going to be the "madden killer" Thanks EA for ruinning another great company that released football games EA: 2 Others: 0

# 13 CzingerX @ 10/09/11 10:16 PM

I was hoping for at least one more edition to this game.

# 14 pistonpete @ 10/10/11 03:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PaleVermilion


	This is not EA's fault. Come on. NaturalMotion dug their own grave with releasing a game that wasn't quite ready, releasing a patch that then broke their not ready game, and failed to support it further.

If you've got a 360, the gameplay can be helped via roster editing and it is playable that way. It's still not great but it to me is better than Madden in that is more organic and I like that. I agree NM should have patched the running game issues after the Greathouse patch. But I suspect they couldn't afford to pay for it or they had already moved on from an organizational prospective. My complaint is that they never owned up to the running game issues and at least acknowledged the problems, especially on PS3.

# 15 Bellsprout @ 10/10/11 03:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Details


	Maybe one day the NFL will see the downside of the exclusive license agreement.

I really doubt they'll ever see the downside of money.

# 16 TacKLed @ 10/10/11 06:32 PM

I like the game because of the physics and the customizable teams. This game doesn't suck but while it has room to improve, they could of did a lot more with this game if they made a second one like an auction house to sell teams like one would do for a car in Forza and an updated Franchise with customizable gravity options.

# 17 tabulaRasa @ 10/11/11 04:49 AM

A shame, the game felt so fresh compared to the stale madden, but lacking licenses and the whole sha-bang... oh well.

# 18 mestevo @ 10/14/11 04:10 PM

Heh, Backbreaker forum is back, with a message from NM saying they're shutting the forum down at the end of the month in favor of funneling people to Facebook. The head of development, Todd, also posted for the first time in 6 months only to edit every post in a thread for profanity.

# 19 NFL2102 @ 10/15/11 09:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mestevo


	Heh, Backbreaker forum is back, with a message from NM saying they're shutting the forum down at the end of the month in favor of funneling people to Facebook. The head of development, Todd, also posted for the first time in 6 months only to edit every post in a thread for profanity.

He edited the title which caused it to show that he edited every post.

Sad that there moving everything to facebook considering they hardly update there.

# 20 jyoung @ 10/19/11 11:12 AM

I guess this is officially "The End," then, with the Backbreaker forums shutting down.

I don't get why they wouldn't at least continue putting their games on XBLA.

Backbreaker: Vengeance actually outsold Tecmo Super Bowl: Throwback on XBLA:

http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/Ga...by=BestSelling

BBV is ranked 226 out of 421 games on the XBLA sales charts.

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Backbreaker Developer: "Very Unlikely That We Will Revisit Full-On Football Again"