Yes, the video game equivalent of project green light has finally met its demise. What seemed like a great idea and way for amateurs to try their hand at video game design has ultimately proved impractical. Microsoft and Team Dakota announced that they have decided to terminate operations on the DIY game development tool, Project Spark permanently. Starting today, Project Spark cannot be downloaded from the Xbox Live Marketplace, also all online operations for existing users will cease on December 8th, 2016. Thomas Gratz, the community manager for Project Spark had this to say in an official forum post in regards to the news.
"This was an extremely difficult decision for our team that we do not take lightly. When "Project Spark" transitioned away from active development last fall, many of our team members moved to other projects within Microsoft Studios. While this means there have been no layoffs at Microsoft, it also means it’s simply no longer feasible to continue the behind-the-scenes work involved with keeping “Project Spark” up and running with meaningful updates and bug fixes, so we have come to this hard decision."
I remember when Project Spark was first announced via a promo featuring legendary video game rebel Conkers the Squirrel, from Conkers Bad Fur day. However, the nostalgic air they tried to instill in the project ultimately couldn’t save it. The writing was kind of already on the wall for Microsoft's seemingly creative endeavor after the company announced the product's free transaction in September. At that time, refunds were announced for any Project Spark DLC or full-license purchases made after July 28, and Microsoft said that they killed any active development. But a full shutdown? Even I didn’t see that coming. Microsoft is offering credit to those who purchased after October 5th, 2015.
The project was ultimately bogged down by the ever unpopular micro-transactions as well as a series of perplexing sales pitches, as they tried to pair it with the limiting and tedious Kinect for Xbox One. However, the project did help produce some creative ideas and did have a lot of potential.
