Roberts made it clear that he is leaving Digital Anvil of his own free will he stated that he had no desire to be part of a large organization, and cited his similar decision to leave Electronic Arts nearly five years ago. Roberts said that he expects a demo of Conquest to be released sometime next week, and hopes the game will ship within the coming months.Ĭhris Roberts will continue to work closely with the development teams and Microsoft and Digital Anvil to ensure that FreeLancer achieves the goals he originally had envisioned for it. Conquest: Frontier Wars, another Digital Anvil game, is completely done and like Loose Cannon, is also being shown to publishers interested in taking on the responsibility of releasing it.

According to Roberts, Microsoft did not pick up the game as part of the acquisition, and it is currently being shopped around to various publishers.

This acquisition does leave the status of the driving combat game Loose Cannon in jeopardy, however. Roberts assured us that FreeLancer wouldn't undergo any major design changes whatsoever, as its design, interface, and artwork is finished, and the only thing left to do is to generate content and flesh out its storyline. Roberts admits that he was a bit too ambitious when he founded Digital Anvil in 1997, and stated that his company 'wanted to develop not only hugely ambitious games, but too many hugely ambitious games.' This acquisition will let the development team at Digital Anvil focus solely on its two games, FreeLancer and the unannounced Xbox game. Microsoft and Digital Anvil have been in talks about a possible acquisition since the E3 trade show in May, 2000. Digital Anvil founder and CEO Chris Roberts will leave the company to pursue other creative endeavors, although he will work with Microsoft through the completion of FreeLancer. Under the terms of the agreement, Microsoft will own the rights to some Digital Anvil games, including the upcoming space-combat simulation game FreeLancer and an unannounced Xbox game, which has been in development for nearly two years.

Microsoft has announced an agreement to acquire Texas-based development studio Digital Anvil.

Anvil software founder