Monthly Archives: July 2009

Rockstar co-founders Jamie King and Gary Forman’s 4mm Games has found an interesting way to fund projects in the current economic climate.

Investment banks that fund multiple projects instead of relying on just one to return the investment.

“The company we’re working [with] is CEA Autumn, it’s a new fund,” company CEO Nick Perrett told Siliconera. “CEA is actually a media investment bank in New York and they have like forty funds and a billion dollars under management. They do everything from mobile to mainstream publishing and they didn’t have any presence in games.

“Their basis in entering it is it’s one of the best areas of entertainment to make money. Really, we have a great relationship with them and it’s slate oriented. It’s like film financing where you get a slate of films. We’re being funded for a slate of games.”

4mm’s first title to be released is Def Jam Rapstar, a hip-hop rapping game with video sharing features.

Electronic Arts were the previous license holders for the franchise.

More through the link.

Kenji Matsubara, CEO of Tecmo Koei, has said that the company plans to take advantage of the expanding European and US markets.

“The US and European markets are expanding very fast, so we have to focus on these markets,” he told CVG, at a recent London event. “And our strategy is to expand our library. We have our current brands like Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive – they are very popular especially in the North American market. And we have Dynasty Warriors as well.

“We have to focus on expanding our existing brands, and in addition we plan to create new IP targeting the western market. So we’re hiring developers not only within Japan but overseas too, like in Singapore and Toronto Canada.

“We are pretty much ready to develop titles focusing on a western audience, so that’s our strategy.”

The company is also currently at work on a Euro PS3 exclusive, and Matsubara say that focusing on all platforms is the proper way in to ensure market saturation. Therefore, he doesn’t understand why Activision has threatened Sony with lack of support.

“I’m not sure what Activision means in those comments, but Activision sees that the PS3 is a very important platform,” he said. “In the PS2 days, Sony was dominant, and nothing else came close. Now, in the PS3 era, I understand that the 360 is bigger, but the PS3 isn’t small – it has a big share [of the market].

“So from a publisher or developer’s view, focusing on a single platform is very risky. Instead we have to focus on providing every title for every platform.

“That’s a key standpoint for Tecmo Koei.”

Cliff Bleszinski has told Develop that the RPG genre will eventually mash in with shooters.

“I had a conversation with Harvey Smith – one of the lead designers on Deus Ex – and said to him the future of shooters is RPGs,” he told the site.  “He said he completely agreed. There was a time when the industry warmed down, and then BioShock came along.”

As far as the Gears franchise including RPG elements in the future was concerned, as usual, Bleszinski was cryptic.

“It depends on where things go. I mean, one could wean that from the comments I made earlier about the future of shooters is RPGs and see where things are going with us.”

The full interview is through the link.

It was bound to happen sometime. Eidos owner Square Enix has decided to form a new European entity in Square Enix Europe, to be headed up by current Eidos CEO Phil Rogers – a move which will result in the Eidos publishing brand being “vapourised”.

The amalgamation will result in job losses although precise numbers are unknown as of yet.

“Unfortunately we are expecting some jobs to be impacted directly by this in both Europe and North America,” read a statement from the company.

“We are hoping to minimise this wherever possible and offer support and advice to any employees directly affected.”

In the US all sales, marketing and distribution responsibilities will be transferred from Eidos Inc to the region’s Square Enix office, headed up by John Yamamoto.

Apparently the current Eidos dev studios will still carry the Eidos brand.

More on GI.

Yeah, well. It was fun while it lasted. CVG did the inexplicable in actually getting in touch with PCB Productions, the digital content firm that recently listed Syphon Filter 5 and SOCOM 4 as ongoing projects on its site.

Long story short: it’s not true.

“I apologize for the confusion. There appears to be some errors on our credits,” said the company.

“Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror was recorded a few years back with Image Metrics, and we recorded Red Steel for the Wii,” they said, adding: “We recently worked on Socom FTB 3 for the PSP.”

And that’s that.

The Nikkei’s reporting that Demo Play, the Nintendo system that allows gamers to skip through difficult sections of games, is to be included in handheld titles.

The system was announced as a Wii initiative at E3, and will be included in New Super Mario Bros. Wii later this year.

More on Kotaku.

The Wii version of Rock Band’s getting some actual Rock today, in the form of tracks from The Presidents of the United States of America, The Offspring, Lamb of God, Green Day and more.

Get the full list after the break. Duplication of effort is the bane of modern living.

More »

Tales of Monkey Island: Launch of the Screaming Narwhal launches for PC and Wii today – EG.de’s got some new shots to celebrate.

The game’s a continuation of the classic Lucas adventure. You should buy it. As soon as we know where to get it from we’ll point you in the right direction.

Update – And here it is. Thanks, Hunam.

Just Add Water’s Stewart Gilray’s told 1UP that the UK dev’s got plenty more on its plate than the newly-announced Gravity Crash.

“Right now we have another three projects in the pipeline,” he said. “When the time is right, we will talk about them.”

Gravity Crash will release later this year for PS3 as a PSN exclusive.

Visceral boss Glen Schofield’s claimed in the latest EA podcast that twice as many people played Dead Space than actually bought the game new.

The developer “did studies on sort of how many unique users there were on the PSN network and Xbox Live. And realized, you know what, there’s over three million people that have played Dead Space.

“Maybe we’ve only sold 1.5 million or whatever the number is. But there’s something there because that means that, OK, there were a lot of used sales,” said Schofield.

Thanks, Kotaku.

According to this Mobclix chart, the App Store now has more than 13,000 games on sale for iTouch devices.

At the time of writing, 22.6 percent of those titles are free, the rest being premium.

There’s no percentage available on how many are “any good” or not.

More on GI.

SCEA’s applied for a trademark for Echoshift, as you can see here.

What is it? We don’t know. An Echochrome sequel, or something?

Thanks, superannuation.

Eurogamer.es is rumouring that PowerVR technology from Imagination Technologies will form the basis of the still-in-development PSP2.

The site’s sources claim that a quad-core iteration of the low-power SGX543MP chip, codenamed “Hydra”, will be present in the next generation handheld. This is the next next one. Not PSP Go.

Get more from Digital Foundry.

GT5 will set a new tide-mark for racing games, Polyphony Digital legend Kazunori Yamauchi has told the US PS Blog, provided the team creates the game it initially intended.

“We always set very high goals and ideal for our games,” said the developer, talking at E3. “The [E3] GT5 trailer that you saw is a very small portion of what we’re working on.

“As long as we actually achieve our goals and fulfil our expectations I’m sure it would set the new industry standard.”

The game was revealed at E3 this year with a knockout trailer of GT’s trademark models rallying, road-racing and, um, Nascaring.

The very short interview can be seen below.

More »

Lego Rock Band will have a Jackson 5 track, Traveller’s Tales boss Jonathan Smith told VG247 this morning.

“We have the Jackson 5′s amazing ‘I Want You Back’; “Breakout” by Foo Fighters, and ‘A-Punk’ from the brilliant Vampire Weekend,” said the developer.

These new tracks are in addition to those confirmed when the game was announced, named:

• Blur: ‘Song 2′
• Carl Douglas: ‘Kung Fu Fighting’
• Europe: ‘The Final Countdown’
• Good Charlotte: ‘Boys and Girls’
• Pink: ‘So What’

The game’s out later this year for 360, PS3, Wii and DS.

This Gamekyo piece claims Konami’s dropping the need for a Konami ID for online PES 2010 play.

This will come as welcome relief after the ridiculous Metal Gear Online registration clusterfucks. Supposedly, all you need do now is buy the game and go online with it, without having to add two proprietary IDs. Amazing.

Microsoft and Sony are to run the servers this time. Not Konami.
Thanks, Kotaku.

Japanese anime studio Production I.G. has confirmed it’s involved in the animated version of Dante’s Inferno with the Film Roman production company, according to this AnimeNewsNetwork report.

Apparently, director Yasuomi Umetsu already revealed the project on his blog in May.

Umetsu, Ergo Proxy director Shukou Murase, and other directors will oversee the six-part project.

Hit the link for more. Apparently the whole thing’s going to be fleshed out at Comic Con later this month.

It’s Tuesday, a great day to watch American people talk about motion controllers on a website. Luckily, then, Gametrailer has posted its latest Bonus Round, which fulfils that need to the hilt.

It’s GameTrailers’ Geoff Keighley, Shane Satterfield, Wedbush Morgan’s Michael Pachter and Kotaku’s Michael McWhertor rabbiting on about Natal, and so forth. Complete your morning.

Sony’s confirmed its wares for the San Diego Comic Con later this month, and it consists of panel discussions on Uncharted 2 and Ratchet & Clank.

There’s a community event on the latter, as well.

Full details on Kotaku. Comic Con runs from July 23-26.

Well, here we are, then. 3DRealms has released the first shot of Duke Nukem 3D on iPhone. It looks exactly as you’d expect it to – get it from IGN.

The game, being put together by Machineworks Northwest, is a full port of the 1996 shooter, complete with smoothed-out sprites.

It’s out “very soon,” apparently.