Starsiege: Tribes was released in November of 1998, and sold a total of 210,000 copies.
A single player version called
Tribes Extreme began development shortly after the release of
Starsiege: Tribes, but was abandoned before completion
[1].
Tribes 2 added additional vehicles (such as a two-person tank and a three-person bomber with a belly turret), weapons, and items. A few details of gameplay were changed; for instance, the original game made a player choose his load out while he was at a supply station (sometimes resulting in long lines to use the station), while the sequel required the player to choose his load out before he used the station.
Tribes 2 also included many features to help its community of players: it included user profiles, interactive chat areas, and message boards. The initial release of
Tribes 2 was plagued by bugs and slow performance; several patches were released over the following year (first by Sierra, later by
GarageGames) to address these issues.
Tribes Aerial Assault was a
PlayStation 2 version of
Tribes 2. Developed by
Inevitable Entertainment and published by Sierra, it offered simplified but significantly swifter gameplay (fewer maps and vehicles, and a subset of the original's voice commands) and network support for up to sixteen players at a time.
Tribes: Vengeance was a
prequel to the other games. In addition to multiplayer support, it featured a full single-player game with a storyline. It was developed by
Irrational Games using a heavily modified
Unreal engine to bring the game's appearance up to par with other modern first-person shooters. This new Tribes largely de-emphasized the focus on massive maps and slower gameplay that was typical of
Tribes 2 in favor of the swifter action of the original
Starsiege: Tribes and
Tribes Aerial Assault. Battles were faster paced, and teamwork and vehicles were less necessary.
Tribes: Vengeance was released with almost no marketing support in autumn 2004 shortly after the release of
Doom 3 and
Far Cry and just before the releases of
Half-Life 2 and
Halo 2. Sales were predictably poor: after six months, only 47,000 copies of the game had been sold. In March 2005, all support for
Tribes: Vengeance was dropped, including a planned patch that would have addressed several bugs and added
PunkBuster support.
In February 2006,
GarageGames "leaked" short videos of a tech demo which featured "tribes like" game play on their
Torque Shader Engine or TSE.
[2] The demo made its debut at the 2006
GDC as "Legions", an obvious allusion to the Tribes series for which the team is famous for. Announced officially in 2007 as a "spiritual successor" to Tribes,
Fallen Empire: Legions was released to the public in June 2008 on
InstantAction, and is currently being developed by the community after InstantAction was shut down in November 2010.
[1]
In March 2009,
GarageGames announced it had obtained the rights to the Tribes franchise from
Activision Blizzard and would be bringing Starsiege: Tribes to InstantAction as
PlayTribes.
[3] However on November 11, 2010, InstantAction was shut down, thus cancelling development on PlayTribes. A leaked build of PlayTribes was released in March of 2010.
On October 23, 2010,
Hi-Rez Studios announced that they were the new owners of the Tribes franchise, and were developing a new Tribes MMO called
Tribes Universe.
[2]
Hi-Rez Studios attended PAX East 2011 and announced
Tribes: Ascend, a multiplayer-only successor to Tribes 2 for the PC. The game was released on April 12, 2012.
[3]