Rhode Island Gov’t Runs Afoul of Microsoft Trying to Sell Xbox 360 Dev Kits

It’s been a while since we’ve heard about 38 Studios and its monumental collapse from earlier this year. Today, it seems, the government of Rhode Island had commissioned SJ Corio Company, a commercial auction and liquidation company, to sell off the recovered assets from the offices of the now-defunct studio. The liquidation is part of the government’s attempts to recoup the $75 million loan given to the company, but apparently they’ve hit something of a snag.

Included in the assets, it seems, are Xbox 360 developers’ kits, which never belonged to 38 Studios to begin with, but rather Microsoft itself. The story was first broken by Giant Bomb, but Joystiq followed up with Microsoft to get their statement on the situation:

“Xbox 360 Development Kits (XDK) are the property of Microsoft and are only licensed to authorized studios and may not be assigned or sold to any third party without the written consent of Microsoft. We will be contacting the appropriate parties involved in the auction of 38 Studios’ assets to remove the XDK units from the auction listing and to secure the return of the consoles to Microsoft.”

You’d have thought that someone at 38 Studios would’ve gotten in touch with Microsoft and Sony about returning all those dev kits…but then, not really getting things done was part of the developers’ problem in the first place.

Shame, too. Those dev kits probably could’ve fetched a pretty penny.

Via Joystiq and Giant Bomb