Oh No! Michel Ancel Is Departing The Game Business
If you don’t know the name of Michel Ancel, you’re probably familiar with his most famous creation, a thing with floating limbs and a big nose named Rayman. He’s regarded as the French Miyamoto, and….now he’s not making games anymore.
Ancel announced his retirement on his Instagram page at 7:07 in the morning (later in France). “After more than 30 years, I’ve decided to stop working on video games and fully focus on my second passion: Wild Life! My new project takes place in the real world and consists in a wild life open sanctuary dedicated to education, nature lovers and … wild animals.”
We know nothing of a new Rayman, but Ancel has two announced games still yet to be released, and both have been in in development for years: Wild Sheep Studios’ Wild and Ubisoft’s Beyond Good & Evil 2. He spoke of those in his next sentence: “Many of you might want to know what will happen to Wild and BGE2. No worries, since many months now the teams are autonomous and the projects are going super well. Beautiful things to be seen soon. May the fox be with you.”
Beyond Good & Evil 2 has been in development for so darn long it’s beginning to rival Duke Nukem Forever in terms of the waiting period. Originally teased in 2008 with a short skit involving the characters from the original, nothing was seen again until another trailer appeared a decade later at E3, starring a completely new cast of characters and a LOT more swearing. It didn’t feel nearly as Ancel-y as the first video, and maybe we now know the reason…he’s just not into it anymore.
As for Wild, that one was first announced as a Playstation 4 exclusive in 2014, it hasn’t been seen since, and we’re running out of time to publish games on the PS4. We’re not holding our breath on that one, and our interest in BG&E 2 is rather low now.