Rolando 3 canceled, but the franchise lives on
by Griffin McElroy 
on Feb 18th 2010 12:10PM
After the not-exactly-phenomenal commercial reception of
Rolando 2, iPhone developer ngmoco decided to swap to a free-to-play model for all its future titles. It's a model which led to the development of the extremely competent iPhone shooter
Eliminate, but the new business model also led to the unfortunate death of the
third installment in the Rolando franchise. The developer's co-founder, Neil Young,
explained to IGN, "we said to ourselves, 'Look. If we can't make the game free-to-play, we're not going to release it.' And
Rolando 3 as it was envisioned at that time was not a free-to-play product."
However, don't think you've seen the end of the
Loco Roco-esque platformer. Young later confirmed that "at the appropriate moment we'll deliver a new
Rolando experience that takes full advantage of everything we've learned from the free-to-play world." Sounds like we'll eventually get a new
Rolando and, better yet, it won't cost us any
Rolandough.
