You may recall that Free Radical Design shut down due to the commercial failure of the PS3 exclusive Haze and the bad economy which forced the company to close its doors and put into question whether TimeSplitters 4, which was being worked on, will ever see the light of day.
Well now it may, because ReSolve Partners is handling the administration of Free Radical during this time of mourning for the company’s demise, and is looking to sell the company off to the highest bidder, whether that means selling it whole or cutting it up into pieces and selling them off one-by-one.
A spokeperson for ReSolve Partners told GI.biz that there is strong interest in buying the company and that they are looking to sell the company whole if they get a buyer willing to buy the company in one piece although they are perfectly willing to cut the company into pieces and sell each piece off if they can make more money that way.
Resolve says that they will know in ten days what specific parts of Free Radical other companies are interested in buying or whether they will be able to sell the company wholesale to someone else.
There are a number of pieces of Free Radical Design that other developers may be interested in picking off. Included among them is the TimeSplitters series and TimeSplitters 4 which was already in development as well as the Second Sight IP and the Haze IP.
Personally I think a smart developer would pick up the TimeSplitters series and then not only continue on with development of TimeSplitters 4, but release a TimeSplitters collection for Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii that would put all of the previous games: TimeSplitters, TimeSplitters 2 and TimeSplitters: Future Perfect, into one package to get people excited about the series again while they work on the fourth entry in the franchise.