Continuing today’s series of most unexpected developments in the gaming industry, we have Futuremark entering the gaming industry as a full-fledged video game development studio. Or in short, Futuremark will now be making games. This announcement is, in my opinion exactly as random as the Valve’s “Steamworks” announcement.
For those who are not well-versed with hardware manuals, Futuremark is best-known for 3DMark, a benchmarking tool whose primary purpose is to rank your hardware with shiny numbers so that you can numerically prove that you have a better and more geekier computer set-up than your friends (if you have any). To read more on Futuremark’s dive into game development, hit the jump.
Games will come from the newly-formed group “Futuremark Games Studio”, which is “committed to developing original IP games with the highest quality game play combined with our established track record of creating blow-your-socks-off visuals” according to Futuremark CEO Tero Sarkkinen.
I have no doubts that Futuremark will make brilliantly beautiful looking games, as they really have some good guys on the graphics department. But it’s the “highest quality game play” part that bothers me somewhere. I wish Futuremark Games Studio good luck, but they have a lot to prove for sure.
Right now we don’t know of any games, but Sarkkinen hints that there will be quite a few games. Of course, expect an announcement or two, at least a good demonstration at the upcoming Games Developers Conference 2008 (GDC 2008) at San Francisco. Then again, maybe not. Still, there will be some guys from Futuremark games over there, so give them a holler!
Futuremark has a trendy press release here, and Futuremarks Games Studio has a site here, but it has nothing on it but a pretty sexy “Coming Soon” notice and a design to die for.