First game of the Descent series was first launched in the year 1995. Very soon, it gain success and build a strong community. The reason for the success was use of the unique six degrees of freedom (6DOF) gameplay. After continuing the success in two sequels Descent II and Descent 3, the publishers are ready for the planned fourth edition Descent 4. It will be published by the re-emerging publisher, Interplay Entertainment. The game were facing some problems, but recently it was confirmed by Interplay Entertainment that they have plans for developing the game, after raising funds for the development for an MMO based on the Fallout franchise. The game will be released under the genre of First person shooter and for the Microsoft Windows platform.

In an interview conducted on September 11, 2000, it was revealed by PlanetDescent that the development for the Descent 4 is cancelled. Later some speculations as made that Red Faction, a new project ad Volition was Descent 4. Such speculations were made because main character of the Red Faction was Parker and some of the plot points were similar to Descent 4. All the speculations were cancelled by Mike Kulas president of Volition Inc. Although he admitted that, some technologies in Red Faction are used from Descent 4. PlanetDescent also asked about any possibilities of Volition developing Descent 4, Mr. Kulas stated that there are very rare chances of working on Descent sequel. This was due to the fact that in 2000, Volition left Interplay Entertainment for THQ.

On March 13, 2008, Interplay updated their website, inserting a background image and some of the games were highlighted in the company’s roster. The trademark blue shield was included in the background image, confirming further that Descent is the project on the focus radar of the company. Again on September 22, 2008, when company re-opened their website, the discussion board was including official Descent forum. And till October 21, 2008, Interplay re-registered the Descent trademark with USPTO.

In between many third party developers expressed interest in development their own sequel to a franchise they were feeling was prematurely abandoned. But all of these third party developers eventually run into licensing issues or have been issued cease and desist orders by the trademark holders. Some of them are:

1. Open Descent Foundation
2. Descent 4: Invasion
3. Core Decision

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