Stardock Talks Star Control, Master of Orion Sequels.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 
Brad Wardell of Stardock tells Gamasutra that his company would be interested in making follow-ups to Master of Orion and Star Control:

"I actually pitched Atari on a whole idea for a true successor to Star Control," CEO Brad Wardell tells Gamasutra, noting that the game would follow original series developer Toys for Bob's Star Control II rather than the Legend Entertainment-developed Star Control 3 ("We just pretend that never happened," the CEO says of that release).

The exploration-driven space strategy game is said to have influenced Stardock's Galactic Civilizations series as well as Ironclad Games' Sins of a Solar Empire, also published by Stardock.

Novato, California-based Toys for Bob has actually floated the idea of making its own Star Control II sequel, with co-creator Paul Reiche III indicating he has tossed potential design ideas around, but with the company now owned by publisher Activision the proposal seems to be stuck in limbo.

Wardell also mentioned Simtex's Master of Orion as a franchise he would like to see Stardock continue. Like Star Control, its third entry was developed by a different studio -- in this case, Quicksilver Software -- and was not as well-regarded as the original games.

"We'd like to do a Master of Orion 4," said Wardell, noting that those rights are owned by Atari as well. "It would be an updated Master of Orion 2. There would be more to it, but that would be the basis of it."




I'm not sure it qualifies as news per se, but it's certainly intriguing....