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Fishlabs co-founders return with next-gen studio
Galaxy on Fire: Alliances developer Fishlabs was swept up by Koch Media last December, a purchase preceded by layoffs in October. Fishlabls co-founders Michael Schade and Christian Lohr departed the studio during the acquisition, but the duo have surfaced with an eye on other platforms - Rockfish Games is working on its first project, which Shade says is "most likely going to happen on next-gen [consoles]." Although Fishlabs mostly dealt with mobile releases, Schade explained that the paid market in the mobile space is "almost non-existent" on the App Store or Google Play. Schade added that the free-to-play model is "just for the big guys that have deep pockets and/or billions of active users a month so they can cross promote their own titles." Schade noted that console and PC users are still willing to pay for experiences, as evidenced by the $60 starting price for most retail games. While that's fair, the frequency and severity of sales on services like Steam have made some developers wary that the mobile space's problems will soon be shared by the digital storefront. Free-to-play games Warface and Warframe have reached consoles, as well. Beside those similarities between markets though, it will be interesting to see how Rockfish performs against a new currant. [Image: Fishlab Games]
