Nihilistic to become nStigate, going digital, Vita loses another developer

Okay, you can start the jokes here. But, Nihilistic seems to have tried damn hard of CoD Black Ops: Declassified and even Resistance isn't a bad game, just uninspired. Even so, the company is quitting the world of big box games and heading to the digital market.

The new entity, nStigate will focus on download and mobile games according to a report by CVG. That pretty much puts a stop to any efforts for DLC for Black Ops, unless someone else picks up the mantle. Nihilistic's switch follows hot on the heels of Sega's Hardlight Studio and Starhawk developer Lightbox in moving to iOS.

This means that Nihilistic, having developed games for other IPs, now likely loses the chance to come up with its own unique title could have been based on those experiences. Also, a lot of Vita development skills are either going to be heading elsewhere or will be refocused, even in Declassified isn't great, it represents the best we have in FPS (perhaps until Killzone turns up) and losing it will be a further blow to the Vita's feeble development roster.

Let's hope Declassified is a great farewell for the company, rather than another cause for grumbling and bitching. Although with the ridiculous levels of expectation and overgrown sense of entitlement from the online gaming community (guilty as charged) that's highly unlikely.

What this rush is starting to sound like is the early FPS days when splinter groups from major developers were springing up all over the place with the killer shooters. Led by Ion Storm, where are that lot now? Exactly!