Some months ago it was revealed that Empire Interactive, after several years of financial troubles, was to go into administration, and now two of its titles have disappeared from the marketplace.

Both Double Dragon and Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe are no longer available for purchase, and likely will not be coming back. Empire Interactive also had Pipe Mania in development for Xbox Live Arcade but as Empire and the development studio are now gone, it can now be considered canceled.

All of Emipre's IP rights were sold off last month, and Zoo Games, or Zushi Games as they are also known, picked them all up. Double Dragon and Speedball 2's IP are owned by both Million and The Bitmap Brothers respectively, and most likely have returned to their holders.

However Empire's PSOne and PSP titles, which includeSheep, Pipe Mania and Carol Vorderman's Sudoku, are all still available on the PlayStation Network. As Empire owned these IP they appear to continue to be published by Zoo Interactive.

It's a matter of another publisher picking up the pieces, but would it be worth it? Some suggest that Double Dragon has done well, and continued to do well, at its 400MSP price point, while Speedball 2, at 800MSP, did not. As both games came out in 2007, selling more copies now might be a difficult task, and not worth the effort.

With the announcement that the majority of Midway will be picked up by Warner Bros. Interactive we might see this situation occur once again. Midway has 9 titles on Xbox Live Arcade, but as they were published by Midway themselves there's little conflict of interest. The PlayStation side however is a different story - Mortal Kombat II, Rampage and Rampart are all Midway properties that are published on PSN through Sony Online Entertainment, with Mortal Kombat II continuing to be one of the top sellers every month.

As there will be a new owner of these IPs it may require new contracts to be written for each game, both for the PlayStation network and Xbox Live Arcade, and those decisions will all have to be made by Warner Bros.

As for those games published by Empire Interactive, the best chance would be to have Microsoft pick up the publishing licenses, as they did once before when Sierra dropped Zombie Wranglers. If you want those games to come back, let Microsoft know.