As I mentioned in a previous post, Hi-Rez’s unannounced game is (probably) called Smite.  At the time that’s all I really knew; the name.  Fortunately I’ve been able to uncover some more details, namely the inclusion of Wizards and spells.  One such spell with raise something from the ground, which immediately made me think of Magicka’s defensive spells, but I could be dead wrong about that.  Another rather large piece of information I’ve uncovered is the fact that Smite will be available for consoles.  Exclusively?  Not sure.  I’d find that unlikely considering Hi-Rez seem to be PC developers first.  But could Smite and Tribes: Ascend mark a shift towards consoles for them?  It’d certainly be a shame, especially now that they’re in control of the Tribes franchise.  On the other hand it could be a godsend…

You might be thinking ‘WTF?’ after reading that last sentence, and I don’t blame you.  Even I don’t really want Tribes to move over to consoles, but at the same time it could breathe some serious life into the franchise.  Tribes was never a big money maker.  The first game saw around 210,000 sales and suffered from piracy, while Tribes 2 had 500,000~ and Tribes: Vengeance less than 100,000 copies.  I’m not certain about how many copes of Tribes: Aerial Assault were sold, but I’m assuming not a whole lot.  So imagine if Tribes: Ascend saw CoD-like sales by being on consoles.  Great for the franchise, but potentially devastating to existing fans.  While technically possible, there’s no way to accurately replicate Tribes’ movement with a controller.

So it basically comes down to making it a multi-million dollar franchise by moving it to consoles, or risking it by keeping the series PC-centric and hope Hi-Rez can pull off the impossible.  I’m not saying Tribes (or Hi-Rez) is guaranteed success by shifting to consoles, but it at least has the possibility to.  Ideally I’d like them to pull off the impossible, but only time will tell at this point…