State of Decay studio pens long-term deal with Microsoft

Microsoft has entered into a “multi-year, multi-title agreement with State of Decay developer Undead Labs.

Studio founder Jeff Strain broke the news in a company blog post, and while most details won’t be revealed until later in the year, he hinted strongly that the deal involves the State of Decay IP.

“I wanted to let you know we’ve signed a multi-year, multi-title agreement to extend our development relationship with Microsoft Studios,” Strain wrote.

“We’ll be able to share details later this year, but as with State of Decay, we think it’s best if we just keep our heads down and build some prototypes before we talk too much. For now, suffice it to say there are big things going on with State of Decay.”

State of Decay is actually two games. The first, codenamed ‘Class3’, is an open-world Zombie survival game for XBLA that has already become one of the platform’s biggest successes and its fastest-selling original title 250,000 copies sold in just two days.

The second, ‘Class4’, is currently being built on the same framework but will add online elements that transform the 1-2 player game into a world shared by thousands of players per server, and will be available on Xbox 360 and PC.

It seems likely that the deal with Microsoft would eventually put the IP on the Xbox One, either through an additional ‘Class5’ release of the original game or follow-up titles.