Remedy Entertainment and publisher 505 Games have entered an agreement to co-develop and co-publish a multiplayer spin-off game of Control, the outstanding totally-not-an-SCP third-person title released initially back on August 27th, 2019. While the news does come as a surprise, the press release contained a healthy amount of information about the joint effort, codenamed “Condor“.
Condor will be a 4-player cooperative PvE game set in the Control universe.
To those of you who were worried the Control spin-off would be a competitive multiplayer title, you can put your humming pitchforks down; “Condor” will be a PvE cooperative experience where up to 4-players will . . . well, that’s kind of all we know so far in terms of gameplay. The press release (which you can read here) shared that the game will be built on Remedy’s Northlight engine and will come to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. So, expect all the ray tracing goodness.
We also learned that Condor’s initial development budget will be 25 million Euro, which is almost $30 million USD. That’s a sizeable budget for a new game, the reason being Remedy and 505 Games will equally split the development and marketing investments (and they will evenly split the net revenues generated by Condor).
Outside of Condor, the press release confirmed something else: “In addition, 505 Games and Remedy Entertainment have outlined high-level collaboration terms to further expand the Control franchise with a bigger-budget Control-game, to be agreed in more detail in the future.”
Yes, we are getting more Control. To pivot to a personal take: I am elated by this tidbit of news. I love Control; utterly adore it. I wasn’t sure if we would get more Control (at least it’s amazing SCP-influenced universe), but turns out the game sold pretty damn well. So, I’m all for more Control.
Now, that doesn’t excuse the mess that was the release of Control: Ultimate Edition, and how there wasn’t a free next-gen upgrade attached. Not even for those who bought all the DLC and owned the Season Pass. It was an odd faux pas at a time when nearly every developer and publisher were offering free next-gen upgrades to existing owners (even Sony, who bungled their implementation a bit).
But, one mishandled launch isn’t reason enough to break a partnership that has benefited both companies in the last four years. Say what you will on how 505 Games botched the release of Control: Ultimate Edition, but the partnership has been a boon to Remedy, and now they get to make more games in the Control universe. Frankly, this is a win for them. Hopefully it translates into a win for the rest of us when Condor and the other Control titles debut.
