Being a big fan of World In Conflict, I was a little miffed when Activision decided to sell developers Massive Entertainment. But now that Ubisoft have bought them and the World In Conflict franchise, it still remains a mystery of what has happened to the Soviet Assault Expansion pack.
World In Conflict: Soviet Assault was to be a console port of the game that would have added a new soviet campaign. It was planned to be released as a downloadable expansion pack for the PC. The port was being handled by Swordfish Studios.
It was reported here, that prior to the sale of Massive Entertainment, ESRB made a listing for a certain World In Conflict: Complete for the Windows, PC platform. This looked like a complete WiC package that included the Soviet Assault content.
A lot of work had been done in it and Massive also made it known that the console version would feature a voice control mechanism(exactly how this would work is unknown).
A couple of trailers got released showing the new content(actual in game footage and new maps)
Massive was bought by Ubisoft this November when it was put on sale. It was reported that Ubisoft did buy Massive together with the rights to World In Conflict. Soon after that, a curious article cropped up detailing the reason why Ubisoft bought Massive. It was stated that Ubisoft brought in Massive to get into the MMO market:
Gamasutra reports that Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot stated that the World in Conflict developer "...are going to help us to also get closer to the MMO space." Speaking at the BMO Capital Markets Interactive Entertainment Conference, Guillemot stated that Ubisoft will move into the "light-MMO" genre with things like free-to-play MMO titles.
No news about Soviet Assault and Massive has remained tight lipped about this so called MMO project and the fate of WiC. A quick check in the World In Conflict forums shows that they just released two community made maps as an update.
It remains to be seen whether the title will see the light of day next year with Ubisoft showing interest in developing an MMO. It also needs to be said that Ubisoft recently published Tom Clancy's End War which was a console RTS game that shared similarities to World In Conflict.
I'm am not sure what all these points to for the series. I truly hope that Massive is somewhere still secretly developing Soviet Assault. Soviet Assault was in works for a Q1 2008 release before the whole Activision sales blitz.
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