Headfirst hoping for life after Hip

Following the closure of Canadian publishers Hip Interactive, Headfirst Productions is hoping to find a new publisher for its survival horror game, Call of Cthulhu: Destiny's End.

Destiny's End, due for release on PC, Xbox and PS2 in summer 2006, is the second title based on author H.P. Lovecraft's Call of Cthulhu series to be produced by Headfirst. A first person shooter, Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, will be released on Microsoft's Xbox console in autumn by publisher 2K Games.

2K Games will also be releasing a PC version of the Xbox shooter in 2006, and a sequel called Beyond the Mountains of Madness has also been announced.

Destiny's End is a third person survival horror title, which features both cooperative and multiplayer gaming. 2K Games has not confirmed whether or not it will be publishing the title, leaving Headfirst to seek alternative means of distributing the title next year.

Hip's closure left several development studios with the daunting possibility that their games might never see the light of day, including Kuju, who announced recently that it was seeking an alternative publisher for its zombie title City of the Dead, based on the cult horror films of George A. Romero.

When Hip Interactive announced its closure in July, the European arm, Hip Europe, had initially maintained that all scheduled releases would still be published, although from the Kuju and Headfirst announcements, it would seem that this is clearly not the case.