So many impatient people.... and alot of scaremongering toboot :/
Being from Australia, the news report and headlines about transmission closing don't phase me as much as most on this site.
Persuing the few facts available at this time, I take a couple of things out of it... "voluntary liquidation", "company doesn't want to make an official annoucement yet".
I'm fairly happy with the detail of this and this is why...
1/ Voluntary Liquidation - The company has failed to meet it's business case (whether deals falling through, loss of projected revenue, or general ecomomic factors), and realises it cannot repay some debt (loan repayments etc), so is forced to make some hard decisions and turn some assets into cash, call in any money owing to them, and try to meet their obligations.
2/ Minimizing expenditure, placing a company into receivership (maybe appointing administrators to oversee), at this stage I would say the main aim is to make the company viable again and maybe even look for investors or someone who would like to purchase the company if they can get the company finances in a reasonable position. (It is a known computer game 'brand' and the name itself would carry some future value) - so until the exact state of the company (and some kind of future forecast completed), the company should be very careful about what public information is made available as it may put at risk and salvage plans it may have.
3/ The lack of information means that there is still probably alot internal of investigation and review to see what can be done.... the longer the silence surrounds this, the more I'd say that there is hope for the company (if not the CEO or current board) as maybe they have some areas of potential revenue or expenditure cutting they are looking into. If was worst case and the company was out of money, had no assets, and no way of continuing, they would have declared bankruptcy by now and tried to remove any future liability from being incurred - ie. cut and run .... so far this hasn't happened.
4/ Codemasters have their name on this game. They have a hell of alot of interest/investment into online gaming and daresay will ensure that they get as much of a return out of AC09 as they can as well as ensuring that any 'goodwill' associated with their name remains. I would also guess they manage the online servers (and hence no issue if transmission goes, with being able to play the game online).
5/ The upcoming patch has been very much talked about, there are cases where people have held off purchasing the game waiting to see if the patch will improve it. I have at least 3 friends that are waiting the patch (1 before he plays it again, 2 who will buy if the patch makes it better to play with us). So with that in mind, there's a good case for saying the patch is a way of gaining potential revenue, either for Codemasters wanting to increase their returns or just keep their 'good' name, or Transmission as a way of getting the business back on track. I'd also say that regardless of who does the patch, the release through the online environments would be handled by Codemasters too.
OFF TOPIC
Finally to those who want to put their thoughts about this game being broken and unplayable on consoles.... what rubbish. There are enough people playing online (I have no trouble getting games), and whilst agree there are issues.... it's still fun and enjoyable most of the time.
My biggest complaint is more about the players who use cheap tactics when laggy games (all close fielders and bowl 100% yorkers, all close offside fielders and then bowl as wide as they can without giving wides etc)... but usually those are the ones who can't play anyway and I'll just finish the game and avoid them later..... but mostly the people I play, play fair fun cricket and don't try to exploit the lag or cheap tactics, so because of that, I have alot of fun playing people online on my PS3, and have made so many PSN friends through cricket now that I've had to create a new account for playing COD and moving my previous PSN list across so I have space.
Disclaimer: These are just my thoughts, and I'm no Master of Ecomnoics or anything like that, there's probably loads of flaws in my logic or reasoning, and maybe I've missed some releases/articles that go against what I'm saying, but at this time that's how I see the state of things, and I'm not too worried that the patch for consoles (or PC) will be cancelled, I'm still fairly sure we will get it - if just delayed while some other more important things get sorted out.... and if I am wrong, well I still enjoy the game and will continue to play it whilst I do.
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