Yup, you heard us right. In the near future, expect to be playing “at least” three new games set in the universe of Frank Herbert’s 1965 classic sci-fi novel Dune.
This announcement was made by Norwegian developer Funcom, who recently signed an exclusive deal with Legendary Studios – a subsidiary of Legendary Pictures, the studio who currently is producing the 2020 Dune movie – to develop Dune games for both PC and consoles.
We're very excited to announce that we've entered a partnership with Legendary Entertainment and will be developing games based on the DUNE universe!https://t.co/eBZfst8pzF
— Funcom (@funcom) February 26, 2019
Here’s the statement made by Funcom on their official website:
Funcom has entered into an exclusive partnership with Legendary Studios to develop games based on the works of Frank Herbert’s DUNE, one of the world’s best known science fiction universes with multiple adaptations into movies, games and other media.
This is a six year partnership to release at least three titles on the PC/Console platforms, with one of the games planned to be in the “Open World Multiplayer” genre that will enter into pre-production in Funcom’s Oslo studio during 2019.
Entering into this partnership is in line with the company’s strategy of working with strong Intellectual Properties, allowing for two different vast and well known universes – CONAN and DUNE – to be available for the Company’s games.
Funcom is most famous for their work on MMO titles, such as The Secret World (2012) and Anarchy Online (2001), as well as developing titles under the Conan IP such as Conan Exiles (2018).
This is not the first time Frank Herbert’s epic tale has been adapted for video games. The first two Dune games were a series of real-time strategy games, with Westwood Studios’ Dune II achieving commercial success in 1998 and effectively shaping the landscape of the RTS genre at the time, even getting an Android remaster last year. Three more Dune games have been published since then, but so far none have had quite the success Dune II enjoyed.
While there’s not much to go on about the new Dune games just yet, it’s not entirely wrong to speculate that they might be set in the same universe as the star-studded live-action one starring the likes of Jason Momoa and Dave Bautista.
Marion has a serious RPG addiction. Sometimes it bleeds into real life; he forgets to sleep because he thinks he has a Witcher’s body clock. Forgive him in advance if he suddenly blurts out terms such as “Mind Flayer” and “Magic Missile”, because never once does he stop thinking about his next Dungeons & Dragons game.
Trinity Sun
