Bethesda "Concerned" About BattleCry

It's never good when your parent company questions your company's or game's direction. That's just what happened recently with BattleCry, the arena battler currently in development by Bethesda Softworks' subsidiary, BattleCry Studios.

In a recent interview with ProgressBar, a Bethesda spokesperson talked about BattleCry in less-than-glowing terms:

We have concerns about the Battlecry game and whether it is meeting the objectives we have for it. We are evaluating what improvements the game needs to meet our quality standards. The studio remains busy during this process on multiple projects.

Not exactly the most ringing endorsement.

I tried BattleCry at last year's QuakeCon and thought it was fun and distinctive, offering a different feel from other arena battlers. Then again, maybe that's part of Bethesda's re-evaluation -- with seemingly everyone offering this type of game now, maybe they're concerned that BattleCry won't be able to cut it in what's become, or soon will become, an overcrowded market.

In any case, beta sign-ups were announced four months ago, and we're still waiting for word on a beta that's supposed to start by the end of the year. We'll keep an eye on how things develop.