A New Alien Game Is In Development

FoxNext has given us some interesting news today. First off, we now know that a new shooter set in the Alien cinematic universe is in development for PC and consoles. To that end, Fox announced that they have acquired California-based Cold Iron Studios, a relatively new team comprised of various veteran developers from games like Star Trek Online, Metroid Prime 3 and Neverwinter. FoxNext Games will be in charge of interactive entertainment based on their properties.

“Cold Iron adds a whole dimension of game development and play to our arsenal: long play-session MMOs targeted to PC and console gamers. The kinds of games Cold Iron develops will enable us to deeply explore the worlds of our franchises, starting with the Alien universe.

We’ll have more to share about how Cold Iron will be tackling the Alien universe in the future.”

The CEO of Cold Iron Studios points to their extensive background in creating online games, and the new Alien game will draw on this strength. We can only speculate as to what this means, with a few possibilities. Judging by their previous statements, its pretty likely that the next game will be multiplayer focused in some way. VentureBeat reports that the game is a shooter — Cold Iron posted a link to their and their story alone giving credence to this being factual. Cold Iron Studios’ CEO also made a statement to Gameindustry.biz stating that their Alien game will “explore areas of the universe that fans haven’t got to experience.”

Given the fact that the game has been classified as a shooter and the extensive talk about online components, I suspect that it will focus more heavily on action. This is a departure from the most recent installment, Alien: Isolation, which is a survival horror game. Whatever they ultimately create, I just hope it is good. It’s unlikely we’ll reach Colonial Marines territory with their pedigree, thankfully.

You can read RelyOnHorror’s review of Alien: Isolation here. What are you hoping for from a new Alien game?