April 18^th, 2005 (4:08pm) - In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, President of videogame developer Oddworld Inhabitants, Lorne Lanning, revealed that the studio will be leaving the videogame industry and pursue film and television. Earlier this month is was reported that California-based Oddworld Inhabitants would be closing its doors at the San Luis Obispo, Calif.-based development studio and moving to the Bay Area.

Although specifics are somewhat scarce, according to Lorne Lanning’s comments, it is believe that Oddworld Inhabitants will pursue to create CG television shows and feature films.

"Ten years ago, if I were trying to raise money for an all-CG animated film, not only would I have heard ’it’s never been done before’ -- since "Toy Story" hadn’t come out yet -- but I’d be asking for a minimum of $120 million," commented Lanning. "Today, I believe I can make three times that film -- meaning in terms of what’s on the screen -- and I could do it for $35 million. So, as CG is evolving -- becoming more efficient, more streamlined, more practical at a more reasonable price -- we believe we can hit that $35 million price point with a CG film today, a film that we currently own all the publishing rights to."

Oddworld Inhabitants movement out of the videogame field is partially influenced by the direction the industry seems to be moving towards because of publishers such as Electronic Arts. Videogame publishers, much like Hollywood movie studios, seem to want to only deal with franchises.

"It’s an industry-wide problem. As game production costs rise, publishers want more sure bets because with rising costs come rising risks," said Lanning. "What we see is an industry which is rapidly discouraging innovation because people don’t want to take chances on more innovative types of titles."

Additionally, Lanning was also displeased on how Electronic Arts handled the promotion of Oddworld Inhabitant’s latest critically acclaimed adventure, Stranger’s Wrath.

"Yes, it was very critically acclaimed but it wasn’t advertised or marketed because Electronic Arts couldn’t get its PlayStation 2 port of our Xbox original to run and if EA isn’t on all SKUs, it just won’t promote the game," he added.

To read the entire interview, click on the following link:

http://www.thehollywoodreporter.com/thr/columns/video_games_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000884458