Skybound Entertainment, best known for owning the world-famous The Walking Dead IP which has spun off into everything from a hit AMC TV show to Telltale Games’ series, has a brand-new baby. Whereas most of the aforementioned work is done by Skybound Interactive, the new Skybound Games division will, instead, focus on publishing titles for third-party or indie game developers.
In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Skybound Games head Ian Howe said that the new games publishing division plans to publish up to ten games per year. That’s a lot of games, but Howe is a veteran of the games industry, as he was the co-founder of games publisher 505 Games. He explained the role of Skybound Games: “Our Games division is really an extension and evolution of what Dan [Murray] and the Interactive team have been doing. Up until now, we’ve largely focused on a licensing approach with our intellectual property, but there was always the desire to take more direct participation of the process.”
That means Skybound Interactive will continue to license Skybound IPs like The Walking Dead franchise while working together with Skybound Games to create new IPs with indie game developers or even expand existing IPs. If you’re thinking that ten games a year would be overambitious for a new games publisher, Howe reminds us that Skybound’s parent company is already an established media company, with collaborations in movies and TV, as well as being one of the world’s leading comics publishers.
The first game to be published by Skybound Games will be The Long Dark. For the first time since it originally launched in August 2017, physical retail copies of the game for the PS4 and Xbox One will be released on September 4, 2018. In other related news, Telltale Games announced yesterday that The Walking Dead The Final Season demo is now available for the PS4 and Xbox One.
