Published in May 2010 for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360, and with subsequent conversion to PSP at the end of that year, it was very well received by critics and users, but ironically it was not accompanied by sales and ultimately led to closure. from its creators, Black Rock Studio, by Disney Interactive Studios.
‘Split / Second’ has nothing to envy to ‘Burnout’ , the work that the English studio took as a reference. From the Criterion Games saga he took the collisions, but taking them to his terrain ( scenarios full of interactive traps ), where it is inevitable to think of another timeless classic like ‘Mario Kart’ because of all that nervousness that he gives off knowing that his “blue shell” it can hit at any time, being able to go from first to last in a pleat.
But why was it not successful?
In video games, as in other areas of art, there is no magic formula that will make a product succeed, no matter how good the seasonings are. ‘Split / Second’ had it all , apparently. It was rabidly addictive, visually spectacular, and its proposal was quite original. And it continues to be preserved frankly well since Xbox One, it must be said.
So what was your problem? Perhaps, the fashions. The weight of other sagas. Or that it did not have enough support from its editor. Or simply, an accumulation of all of the above. Because a few months before the closure of the study in 2011, we saw how another English study had to close: Bizarre Creations.
Yes, a team with much more experience (and greater recognition) with speed and for which we owe them so many kudos for their ‘Project Gotham Racing’ saga. After ‘Blur’, the neon-lit Mario Kart that sold just over a million between consoles and PC, and ‘James Bond 007: Blood Stone’, they said goodbye.
‘Split / Second’ had sales similar to those of ‘Blur’ , according to VGChartz, with an equally modest first week, where not even 100,000 copies were sold. If we add all the versions in total, it does not reach a million and a half sales , with disastrous results on PSP and in physical format for PC. Not even on Steam has it succeeded, with just over 50,000 buyers.
And despite these humble numbers, with which Black Rock Studio did not have, in any case (nor with its own closure, of course), its creators (to whom we also owe ‘Pure’), had planned a sequel much more ambitious than Disney Interactive Studios had to cancel at the end of 2010.
The news that Split / Second 2 was going to have
Apart from the sadness of seeing how many people lose their jobs, in which they had placed so much hope, they were joined by the fact that they could never, unless some development study says otherwise, a ‘Split / Second 2’ .
Because support was never lacking and various online petitions appeared on The Petition Site and Change.org, all of them without luck. But at least it served to bring the community closer together and show the creators of ‘Split / Second’ their unconditional support. There is even a Facebook page about its sequel with various sketches that give us several clues about the news that ‘Split / Second 2’ was going to have.
How not to stick the circuits to the asphalt. There we see, for example, that idea of controlling a motor boat to end up catching a helicopter. The air thing also seems like it was going to have a lot of weight, because several helicopters come out in other designs, so we could be facing a similar approach to Nintendo 64’s ‘Diddy Kong Racing’ , and that Sonic himself and other SEGA characters adopted a few years ago, with almost six million copies sold in total.
The turn proposed by ‘Split / Second 2’ seemed, a priori, very interesting. Because he was not going to renounce the spectacularity of the explosions of his stages, but he was going to increase the game offer, expanding his possibilities.
Too bad all this was left in the pipeline eight years ago …
