Microsoft "sitting" on next Llamasoft title

Jeff Minter, the founder of Llamasoft, has told our sister site Eurogamer.net that his next game, Gridrunner+++, is complete and that Microsoft has been "sitting" on the title.

During an interview, Minter talked about his experiences with his latest tile, Space Giraffe, on Xbox Live and was asked about the progress about his upcoming title, specifically he was asked it the game had a release date.

"No. We sent it off to [Microsoft] months ago, but they've just not said anything - we're just waiting for them," he explained. "Basically I'm going to carry on with the PC version of it if I don't hear from them soon, because they're just sitting on the demo we sent them three or four months ago. We haven't heard a thing."

Minter added that he was disappointed with the reception Space Giraffe received on Xbox Live Arcade, citing the store's set up as partially to blame.

"The thing with Xbox Live is that you have to basically get a lot done in the first couple of weeks, then the game goes into a bit of obscurity after that," Minter said.

"We actually had some very favourable reviews of Space Giraffe, and if you look around, most of them aren't bad. It's just most of them came out too late, and by the time the better reviews came out, the game was already off the front page [of Xbox Live]. So it was just a bit spoiled for us, really."

"It's a lot nicer now," Minter went on, "and I was obviously talking about the way it was when Space Giraffe came out. It is nicer now, because you can, in fact, direct people there from off-site."

"And also the whole interface is a bit easier to navigate than the old version. On the old version, once Space Giraffe disappeared off the front page it took about five minutes to navigate to where it was, so you really needed to want it to seek it out and download it. I think the most important change is being able to drive external traffic there from the normal internet. That is a great help."