Look, yes I know the three words I used are overkill but I’m just pouring my disappointment on the title. ngmoco confirmed to IGN that Rolando 3, the next sequel to the uber fun tilt platformer Rolando, is officially dead… for now.

Who’s the culprit you ask? >> Freemium gaming. It should’ve really been obvious that ngmoco is gearing for a completely “free to play” system with Touch Pets Dogs and Eliminate Pro, and today, it is all but cleared.

ngmoco goes on to say that Rolando 2 was SUCCESSFUL but not enough to release the sequel as a paid game especially if everything’s going FREE or $0.99. This then begs the question, why not do Rolando 3 free to play?

“When we made the decision to go free-to-play, we said to ourselves, ‘Look. If we can’t make the game free-to-play, we’re not going to release it.’ And Rolando 3 as it was envisioned at that time was not a free-to-play product. So we’ve just taken the time to try to figure out how to do that franchise really effectively in free-to-play space,”

So there you go. Let’s remain silent for a moment or two in honor of what I’d call the first epic iPhone game series’ demise. The game is not forever dead, but until ngmoco figures out their whole freemium thing, Rolando 3 won’t see the day.

I personally would love to know how much ngmoco made with Eliminate Pro and TPD and if they think they made MORE money off of those than if they released both games at say $5.99. We’ll be at GDC and we might just ask…