Thursday, January 25, 2007

What Games has Tose Made?

This article is the first I have heard of Tose, a large developer who works mostly in secret doing contract work for some of the heaviest hitters in the business. They are the largest non-publisher game developer. Apparently, they have worked on over 1,000 titles, but the list of which games these are, is secret. The article mentions that they have made a name for themselves from porting popular titles between platforms. Eventually, this porting relationship transforms in to the beautiful flower that is allowing Tose to develop a game and then having the publisher slap its brand on it. Still though, this article made me feel a bit betrayed, like when Capcom developed the Legend of Zelda: The Minnish Cap --> it was a good Zelda game, but it just wasn't Nintendo.

Gaming's Dirty Little Secret

If Tose made modifications, who would get sued if one of these ports infringed an existing copyright or patent? I wonder how far the games companies would go to keep that game list secret? Would the company absorb the lawsuit on a given game in order to not have to reveal its relationship with Tose? Tose is barely mentioned in the credits of most games it works on, and it prefers to stay that way.

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