Message no. 1

From:	the Dark Stranger <darkstranger@*******.NET>
Subject:	Another Off-topic, but still SR thread
Date:	Thu, 11 Feb 1999 13:43:58 -0500

Okay, so Mark will be porting us all over. Cool. Very cool.

A bit of news regarding the whole FASA Interactive being bought out by Microsoft news.
I'm not on RN, so I don't know how new this news is. Feel free to post it over there if
you wish. And say hi for me.

I asked Mike Mulvihill about the whole purchase thing. There's a lot I can't tell you,
since it relates to internal FASA and MS business practices (and I have signed a
confidentiallity agreement with FASA). But I can tell you some other bits.

First of all, this puts FASA as a whole in a fantastic position financially. This should
give them *very* deep pockets, which should allow them to do more projects and fund more
advertising. It should, barring serious stupidity, keep them operating for quite a while
without financial worry. This is probably the best part of the deal for us, since it
*should* allow more pages per book, more art, more color art, a better convention
presence, that sort of thing. It may or may not happen, but the deeper pockets will allow
it.

Second, it gives FASA a suprisingly strong voice within Microsoft and their game division.
This means that any future FASA based products, such as a Shadowrun game, should be much
"truer" to FASA's vision of their products. I'm personally thinking a Crimson
Skies game may be the first fruit of this relationship, but that's *my* thinking.

Third, "Shadowrun: Assassin" is dead. It is possible that it may be revived at
some point, but it is my understanding that it is dead. And while I don't think I can say
why, I can say the primary reason wasn't because of Microsoft. I know there was a rumor
that MS purchased FI to kill SR: Assassin and while that may be partially true, it
certainly wasn't the primary, secondary or tertiary reason for the purchase, at least
according to Mike M; he found that rumor quite amusing actually.

Like I said, this may not be new news to some of you, but since a lot of TK people aren't
on RN, I felt it might be of some use.

Erik J.