Oddworld Forums - New members read: What's Next for Oddworld?

When's the next Oddworld game and what systems will it be on? When will Citizen Siege be released? What's this OddMobb thing?

Any or all of these questions may understandably be asked by anyone who hasn't had the benefit of being a regular reader of the Oddworld Forums or OddBlog for the last several years. For the benefit of everyone, I'm now going to run through those seven years, linking to appropriate sources and summaries of information. At the end you should have some idea of what's coming up for Oddworld fans.

After the creative difficulties and lukewarm reception of Munch’s Oddysee, Lorne decided to explore a new part of Oddworld, and reserve the story of Abe and Munch for films. OWI and Microsoft broke off their four-game Xbox-exclusive deal, but EA cancelled its PS2 port of Stranger’s Wrath and consequently cut the game’s marketing budget. OWI started using their Stranger engine to create a new game, but by the time news of it was published, Lorne had already decided to shut the studios down.

‘Four projects’ were being worked on, including an episodic TV machinima series and the Abe’s Oddysee film (1, 2, 3), but the main focus was Citizen Siege, a CGI feature film set on a dystopian near-future Earth with two tie-in video games. Lorne wanted to do this first to give studios the confidence in his directorial ability to give him more creative control over the Oddworld film. A deal was made with Vanguard Animation, but cancelled because of creative differences. Lorne would still like to make CS, but it's not what they're currently working on.

The new company that Lorne and Sherry have started is called ‘OddMobb’. Despite its name, it has nothing to do with Oddworld: it is some kind of social networking experience that has yet to be revealed. In the meantime, Oddworld Inhabitants has been rereleased on digital distribution services such as Steam: Check out the Buy Thread for fuller details.

Now, an independent game developer called Just Add Water (JAW) is cooperating with Oddworld by working on ‘four or five’ projects involving new and old things:

They did not bring AO or AE to Steam or PSN, nor did they port Munch’s Oddysee to PC.
They did port Stranger’s Wrath to PC and add achievements and patches to MO on Steam.
Because of MO’s reliance on Microsoft software, it will not be released on PSN.
SW is being remastered with higher-quality models, graphics and audio for release on PSN and PC, possibly as a bought patch to the version already available on Steam. The remastered SW may be released on Xbox depending on whether Microsoft will accept it.
JAW will be working on Abe HD, but consider it too early to talk about.

Oddworld Inhabitants now have

a shiny new website on which Alf’s Rehab & Tea has now reopened.
a Facebook Page

There are a number of official accounts on Twitter: