Fresh off blatantly plagiarising an old franchise that most of their staff members worked on previously with another company, Playtonic learnt their lesson and purchased an IP from the same company (Rare) and developed a game directly with it instead.
In a lengthy post on their website, Playtonic reveals that they were initially developing a Perfect Dark clone called 'Precise Light'. Having already faced rejection trying to create business with Microsoft's seemingly dormant IP's (Banjo Kazooie), Playtonic didn't bother inquiring about using the Perfect Dark franchise for themselves.
As Playtonic's managing director David Price explains, it was Microsoft who approached them about not just using Perfect Dark, but purchasing the IP as well:
"We were at the first stages of development for Precise Light in 2015 when we received a random call from Microsoft's Bill Gates. The Xbox brand was taking a battering in the market due to a ridiculous amount of stupid business decisions and Gates was incredibly keen to shed some dead-weight from the company. In his eyes, Perfect Dark was the perfect candidate for a sale. I can still remember Bill's words vividly:"
"'I heard you discards from our shitty Kinect Kuntpany want to purchase that pathetic Perfect Dark IP from us. Well lucky for you it's now worthless to us after Rare destroyed it with PD Zero so you can have it — for a harsh fee — Xbox One exclusivity for your next game. What do you say cunts?'"
" While we continued to chat, Bill e-mailed me an Xbox exclusivity contract and I skimmed through the fine print. To my surprise, 'Xbox One exclusive' only meant that a game has to be released on Xbox One and not the 360 or OG Xbox. We're still free to release our game on competing hardware such as the Wii U or PS4. Of course we agreed to terms and the deal was done"
"Bill then started laughing at me and told me to 'suck shit' and 'get fucked' before lighting a bunch of $100 Bills on fire on top of his phone which ended the call. I almost felt bad as this was just another retarded business decision that Gates was trying to avoid, but I think deep down he has that much money he doesn't even care."
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| Gates also said that he donates to charities to waste money for fun, not to help them. |
The game once known as Precise Light looks very different today. Now known as Perfect Dark -1, it's development nears completion. Project Director Chris Sutherland explains exclusively to Era Error what will set Perfect Dark -1 apart from its last entry in the series, the much lamented Perfect Dark Zero.
"The problem with PDZ is that the Rare's 2005 studio didn't understand the fundamentals of the franchise and we do! We analysed the IP extensively and came up with a core foundation of what is required to make -1 a true entry in the series:"
"1. Blurry as fuck graphics - Perfect Dark Zero's aesthetics missed the mark and the graphics look like they were made of plastic. The original Perfect Dark's gameplay was almost impossible to look at due to its horrendously low resolution and that's what the fans enjoyed, so that's what they're going to fucking get. This will be a theme here."
"2. Optimal Frames Per Second - Perfect Dark (N64) mostly runs at about 5FPS so we decided to emulate this in -1. The more frantic shit gets on the screen, the slower the framerate is — by design. We call this revolutionary feature Slideshow™."
"3. Character Nationality Changes - The one thing that pissed fans off the most is that Joanna Dark's established, strong English persona was changed into a ditzy, Chimpanzee American woman. We decided to rectify this error. 2017 is the age of inclusiveness, so we decided to change Joanna into multiple genders and nationalities at once. At any one point, you could be controlling a combination of a transvestite/hermaphrodite/woman/man/ken/barbie/Asian/Caucasian/African/Indian/Alien/L/B/G/T/Q/+/A/B/C/D/E/F/Blonde/Brunette/Black/Bald/Purple/Green/Full-Able/Wheelchair/Limbless/Headless/Retarded/Meth-Addict + much more."
"4. Completely fuck up a story that was already Destroyed - We'll do everything in our power to annihilate this once beloved AAA franchise beyond repair with our incompetent story telling. You're going to be so pissed off when you find out Joanna is working in a hair salon known as the Institute and Carrington is the head barber. There's no sci-fi, no conspiracy, no Data-Dyne, no Aliens, no covert operations. That was all unnecessary padding. The core of Perfect Dark -1 is to graduate Joanna Dark from Apprentice Hair Dresser, to Queen of the Salon world. We also are also obviously aware that fans wanted another prequel instead of a sequel and we're prepared to deliver."
"5. Gameplay is key - No weapons, no punching (back to slappers), no dual wield, no reload animations, no secondary function. No split-screen multiplayer. No fucking nothing! We don't know what we're doing and we desperately needed help developing this game but we were too scared to ask. Now our loser Publisher Team 17 is going to release this piece of shit to the world to to sell a few copies even though it fucking sucks. It's Aliens: Colonial Marines and Duke Nukem Forever all over again."
"We're mainly screwed because of that stupid Xbox One exclusivity deal that we signed in 2015. There was a deadline requirement to release the game and that was today. Bill Gates has been making really fucked up calls to our office and left several voicemails stipulating that he is the GOAT and wants to be called Billy "Goat" Gates from now on. He called again just a few minutes ago and said that he and his new annoying sidekick Jonathan Steinberg are coming to get us."
"Oh shit, They're here! They're HERE!!! NOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!"
