Found this video today by accident. Towards the end, he records an interesting dev comment that would have been posted in 2020 (a few years AFTER Conan Exiles was released). Is there anything to this information?
Hard to say, keep in mind he’s mostly speculating despite the compelling evidence of the multiple concept artist posts.
There have been comments by staff over the years that would lead to a new game conclusion but no promises.
Possibly some cancelled project, possibly just a study about how a new game could look, possibly a great new game that’ll awe us all. I’d bet on the first two options.
Also, if Funcom would try to invest money into a new game, consider the Tencent influence they’d have to deal with now. Monetization, monetization, monetization.
To say a dirt word: mobile game?
It’s good information.
But probably the wrong conclusion. Concept art that was previously earmarked for product now being released into the wild. Many people discussing what they had been working on but aren’t working on now. Wistful reminiscence about what could have been.
All of which ignores the simple truth that the Ten Penny Company is doubling down on Dune. Funcom will be doing nothing else until the Dime Corp tells them to.
Keep in mind also the time line. Those concepts were from 2020, funcom purchased REH rights in 2021, then Tencent purchased Funcom some time after that. It was announced after the Tencent buyout that work would begin on Dune and all unfinished projects would be shelved indefinitely.
It might just be concept art for Conan Exiles that was shelved or didn’t make the final cut
not commenting on the video, as others said above everything i would have said anyways.
but on the subject of a new conan game in general, keep in mind that every year from now until around 2033-2034, all of the original R.E. Howard conan stories will be going unequivocally into the public domain. some of the weird tales versions already are, but only because of missteps in renewing copyright on old stories. in the coming years, they will be absolutely-without-a-doubt public domain. what this means is that the IP value of Conan will be going down, as anyone with a bit of creativity will be able to make a new game/story/film/whatever using the contents of the source material that has gone into the public domain at that point. The later stuff from the sprague de camp et. al pastiches would still not be public domain for quite a while more. when The Hyborian Age essay enters into the public domain in 2034, the true meat & potatoes of the hyborian age setting will be available to EVERYONE for any use whatsoever. heroic signatures might try to continue to assert trademark ownership, but they will lose just as the arthur conan doyle estate lost their attempt to control public domain works when they took it to court. public domain exists for a reason, even disney couldn’t do anything about steamboat willie, and they tried via trademarking his visual depiction in a disney logo.
and in reality, i think the most likely thing we will see is tencent completely dissolving funcom as a company.