By Toutatis! There seems to be some corporate flip-floppery happening within the ranks of French publisher Microids and the effects of it are most easily seen on their games featuring the famous French gauls, Asterix & Obelix. We received a submission over the weekend pointing out that the company’s 2018 release of Roman Rumble in Las Vegum – Asterix & Obelix XXL 2 had been delisted on PlayStation and replaced just last week with the separate “new” release of Asterix & Obelix XXL 2. In this case it wasn’t just that the game was renamed, it was replaced with another release complete with a separate set of Trophies which is what tipped people off in the first place.
Doing some digging revealed in short order that several Asterix titles from the publisher had received the same treatment in North America: specifically XXL: Romastered, XXL 2, and XXL3: The Crystal Menhir. Stranger still, in comparing the situation with the European and Australian stores it turned out that there have been multiple versions of the games available in those regions since 2022.
So, what’s going on? The major difference in the product listings is the removal of references to Anuman Interactive but I don’t think this is some dark, underhanded ruse to try and sell twice as many titles. No, it’s just another example of how confusing copyrights and corporate branding can be and how they can play hell with game releases.
Awkwardly, Anuman Interactive bought out the original Microïds company in 2010, taking the name for itself and — here’s the major plot point — simplifying the brand name in July of 2019 to Microids (without the diaeresis over the i). This has apparently caused a bit of confusion especially on the PlayStation side of things resulting in the double releases, new delistings, and multiple sets of Trophies.
I haven’t yet gone through every title published by both studios on every platform but the changes seem specific to their recent Asterix & Obelix games and only on the PlayStation Store. The North American store appears to be completely straightened out while duplicate releases can still be found on the Australian and European shops.
TL; DR: in all of the cases and on all of the platforms I’ve seen so far no recent releases from Microids (Asterix or otherwise) are completely unavailable. These near-identical replacements aren’t usually a high priority for adding to the site since the games are still out there but I wanted to make a post this morning while I had the time.