Duke Nukem Whenever

The biggest joke of the next Duke Nukem game, Duke Nukem: Forever, is that it has not come out yet. The game was announced in 1997, and has been in on and off development since then.

Recently, an article on GameSpot said that Take Two Interactive would give the developer 3D Realms an extra $500,000 if they would release the first person shooter Duke Nukem Forever by the end of 2006. Of course everyone took this as a breath of hope for the game, but 3D Realms responded, killing all the excitement.

Our deal is simple. We’re making the game. It’ll be done when it’s done. We’ve funded 99.999% of the game (aside from a very, very small advance from GT Interactive, years ago, before Take 2 bought the game from them). It’s our risk, our necks and our gamble. Under the deal we should be earing royalties from about unit 30,000 or so (that’s a real small number), so yeah… As for the 500k completion bonus, I don’t even know were that came from. Scott would know, but I do know that we never cared or asked for it, and I think it was just tossed in as part of some other agreement. We’re certainly not motivated by that amount of money, after all this time, and getting the game right is what matters. I would never ship a game early (even a couple of months), for 500k.

So, it might be another ten years before we see Duke Nukem back on our computers at this rate. So if you started holding your breath when the recent announcement came out, you should stop, as you’ll die before the game sees the light of day.

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