Well, we've heard from Deep Silver, the company working on Duke Nukem Trilogy for PSP and DS. We've heard from Take-Two, the company that is/was to publish Duke Nukem Forever upon its completion. And now we've heard from Joe Siegler of 3D Realms, who posted up on the company's official message board last night with the following response:
"It's not a marketing thing. It's true. I have nothing further to say at this time."
While this sounds like the sort of thing that might have been in the works for awhile, it certainly wasn't communicated to the entire staff ahead of time. Siegler had conducted a recent interview with a site called Tech HotDish that ran the day before, and also stated that he didn't know about the impending closure when that interview was conducted.
You'd think that, given the long and rough path that 3D Realms and Duke Nukem Forever have ridden on since its announcement back in April of 1997, I might have come to terms with the concept that the game might never come out. But for whatever reason, I'm completely shocked by the news. It had become a running gag for most, and I think that the impossible expectations of a game that's been in development that long wouldn't be kind to Duke Nukem Forever upon its release, to say the least. But, I don't know, as the game slowly started to resurface over the last 12 months, I had convinced myself that it would finally be released sometime in 2009. Heck, maybe it still will be.
There's probably still a final chapter to be written here, but after years of speculating about what, exactly, is going on with 3D Realms and Duke Nukem Forever, I'm pretty much out of ideas. So, instead, take a look at this poker chip, which I made my friend Dave dig out and photograph. These were given out back at E3 1998, where the first video footage of the game was shown. Back when it was running on the Quake II engine. When dinosaurs roamed the Earth.
Eh, whatever. It's kind of disappointing though.
He's rippin'em a new one in heaven.