Category Archives: GAMESCom 2009

Assassin’s Creed II will beat the original game’s 9 million sales, dev boss Patrice Desilets told us at GamesCom last week, thanks to its setting and sequel status.

“Why? Because of Italy,” he said. “Italy has something, really. I’ve met a bunch of people, and Italy has something. Italy is one of the most visited places in the world, and there’s a reason for that.

“Being able to visit Florence, or visit Venice and Tuscany, is something that people will be attracted by.”

The “II” at the end of the game’s title will help seal the deal, Desilets added.

“And it’s a sequel, and [there's been] good press on it, so I think we’re going to outsell [the original],” he said.

It’s not all serious business, though.

“My producer and I were joking that we’re going to sell, like, 725 million copies of it,” Desilets said.

Everyone needs a goal. The game looks properly awesome. You will buy it on November 20.

BioWare and Mythic boss Ray Muzyka is a pleasure to interview. Undoubtedly one of the most professional and ambitious execs in the global games trade, Muzyka heads up some of the world’s biggest core games projects in Mass Effect, Warhammer Online, Dragon Age and upcoming MMO behemoth, Star Wars: The Old Republic. He consistently uses words like “humble” and “honour”: not usual in games-boss-ego-land.

We caught up with the Canadian in Cologne last week. Hit the link for the full thing.

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Koelnmesse has announced that this year’s attendance for GamesCom came in at a staggering 245,000 visitors.

Obviously, a lot more then Leipzig this year anyways.

They’ve also confirmed that next year’s dates will be from August 18-22 2010.

We already have the flights booked.

PR is after the jump.

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Assassin’s Creed II’s chances will not be hampered by the near-identical release date of Modern Warfare 2, creative director Patrice Desilets told VG247 at GamesCom, thanks to its difference in nature.

Did you know the original Assassin’s Creed went head-to-head with Modern Warfare in 2007 and sold 9 million units? We didn’t.

“The first game we released two weeks after Modern Warfare, and we still sold 9 million copies,” said the developer.

“People, when they want their first-person shooter fix, they buy Modern Warfare. If you want you a swords, running on rooftops, big open city fix, this is it.

“And there are people that want to play that, and they don’t want to play the game with guns.”

Desilets added that the sequel isn’t just a rehash, but will have the same allure as the original.

“It has the same appeal as the first one, but we got rid of all the frustration. And it’s much bigger. Really, we give a lot more to the player,” he said.

We sat through half an hour of Assassin’s Creed II gameplay at the show. In a word, instabuy.

Assassin’s Creed II launches November 20. Modern Warfare 2 launches November 11. Both look amazing, for the record. So buy both. Dur.

Lost Planet 2 producer Jun Takeuchi has told Joystiq that they are working on implementing split-screen co-op for the game.

“It’s not easy, but if we are confident that we can do it, we’ll let you know,” said Takeuchi, who was also producer on Resident Evil 5.

He also admitted though that if split-screen was added, some sacrifices were going to be needed.

“Technically, cycling between two split screens, you can actually say it took visual RAM. You still have to work with two sets of AI and physics and so forth at the same time.”

More through the link.

Sony Germany’s given GT5 a “4 Quartal 2009″ date in its official GamesCom paraphernalia, as you can see on GTPlanet.

The game was actual playable at the Cologne show last week. SCEE boss Andrew House told us that we’re going to see specifics on the game “very soon” in an interview at the event.

Polyphony head Kazunori Yamauchi also said last week that the game will release “very soon” after its little PSPgo brother on October 1.

Tokyo, innit. Hit the first link to see the brochure.

GamesCom had loads of cosplayers in attendance, so much so that the group was trying to break a Giuness world record for The Largest Gathering of Games Characters.

Over 400 cosplayers are expected to gather at the event today, to try and break the MCM London record of 376 characters.

Guinness representatives were dispatched, and planned to make each one count by having people write the name of the character and game they are from on a form, get a photo taken, and wait until the rest are counted.

Sounds fun. Waiting in a queue is always fun. Especially one that is over 400 people strong. Hopefully there is a rollercoatser ride at the end of the line. Doubtful though.

Thanks, Joystiq.

BioWare’s Jesse Houston has told VG247 that Mass Effect 2 will run at a solid 30FPS.

He also told us that any weird pauses you might have received during the first Mass Effect are now all gone.

“If you look at most good shooters, they lock down frame-rate at 30FPS: we’ve done the same thing. Bam. Everything’s 30FPS, streaming is fixed up,” said the associate producer for the game.

“If you remember in Mass 1, if you took a step backwards and you hit a weird stream and it’d pause for a moment. We’ve done a away with that. What you’re seeing here is pulled straight from the game.”

Catch our full interview with Houston, locked down here.

It’s out next year for 360 and PC.

BioWare’s Jesse Houston sat down with VG247 at GamesCom to talk about Mass Effect 2.

You can find that here. In that interview, the associate pProducer for ME2 explained a brand new gameplay feature for story conversations of the game, known as “Interrupt”.

We’ll let Jesse take it from here:

“For example, we now have the interrupt system, which is the way we’re trying to let players control the pace of conversations a little more, without having them just mashing the X button and lose the suspension of disbelief.

“We want to keep them there, but allow them to control the speed still.”

The new interrupt system was revealed at E3, but was shown off for the first time to anyone who wasn’t at E3 in a second developer diary for the game.

The game’s out early next year for Xbox 360 and PC.

Mass Effect 2 will receive a simultaneous release on both Xbox 360 and PC when it releases in Q1 2010.

That’s according to Associate Producer, Jesse Houston, who confirmed the news to VG247 during an interview with him at GamesCom.

“We learned a lot from building the PC version before, and having built it six months later there was a big difference. So we actually took what we learned from PC and put it back into 360,” said Houston, who was talking about the development for the game between the PC and Xbox 360 SKU’s.

“Fundamentally, we want you to have the same gameplay experience, but just with the difference in controls. This time round, doing it at the same time for a sim-ship, we can control the differences much more smoothly because it’s the same team building it now.”

Read our full interview with Jesse Houston here.

Loads of LittleBigPlanet stuff has come out of GamesCom. The water stuff, the confirmation of the GoTY edition, the PSP version…it was LittleBigPlanet Central over at the Sony booth, apparently.

To show you just how much LBP was packed in, James Shepherd , the development director at Cambridge Studios, is featured in the video past the break chatting about LBP PSP including details on Create mode, on-the-go level inspiration and more.

Have a watch courtesy of the US PS Blog.

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Bungie’s community manager Brian Jarrard has told VG247 that Halo: Reach will be the final game the studio does on the “current” Halo trilogy.

He confirmed it would be a standalone game and that it is a prequel.

“For now Reach is definitely our next big thing, and it doesn’t really fit into the Halo trilogy itself. It’s definitely a prequel, standalone offering, so we don’t have current plans to go back and inject more content into the current Halo trilogy,” said Jarrard.

“I think ODST is going to be a nice exclamation point, a nice rounding up of multiplayer content and a different side-story, but right now Reach is our focus.”

Halo 3: ODST was proclaimed finished by Halo 3 creative director, Joe Staten, back at E3. Reach was announced at E3 for a fall 2010 release, but there will be a multiplayer beta with ODST.

ODST will drop on September 22.

Catch the full interview here.

Speaking in Konami’s latest issue of the company’s internal magazine, MGS creator Hideo Kojima has said Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker will “require hundreds of hours to complete”.

He also reiterates that the team from Metal Gear Solid 4 will be seriously involved with the game as well as himself.

“The main team from MGS4 is participating in the development of this title and I am involved in all aspects of the game, ranging from design, direction and scenario writing.”

He goes on further to state the game will be a great looking title, despite it being on the PSP.

“Despite being on the PSP, we don’t plan on making any compromises with the graphics. The art team is used to producing PS3-level quality and the results will make you wonder if this is really a PSP game.”

More at Kotaku.

Game’s out next year.

BlizzCon should be starting soon, and we are pumped!

Nathan is in Anaheim now, getting ready to see all things Blizzard.

We are liveblogging the opening ceremony, and you should check it out here.

It will be blizzerific.

EA’s announced at a GamesCom event in Cologne that Command & Conquer 4 will be subtitled.

It’ll now be known as Command & Conquer 4: Tiberuim Twilight.

And that’s all she wrote.

It’s out in 2010 for the PC.

Via IncGamers.

Halo: Reach has been in development since development ended on Halo 3.

That’s what Bungie’s Brian Jarrard told VG247 at GamesCom.

The community manager made the admission as he was talking to us about Halo 3: ODST and how life hasn’t changed much since the studio became an independent studio again after breaking away from Microsoft Games Studios.

“Day to day life hasn’t changed that much. We’ve been super-busy, obviously. We’ve finally been able to announce Halo: Reach, which has been in development right since the end of Halo 3.”

“Having a portion of our team working on ODST while Reach has been going full steam; we’ve been too busy right now to think about too much else. We’re just heads-down making great games. Right now that’s our focus.”

Reach is set long before Halo: Combat Evolved and long before Master Chief was the only spartan left standing, although story specifics are little to zip right now.

The game is due out in fall 2010, but a multiplayer beta token will come with Halo 3: ODST when it launches on September 22.

Catch our interview with Jarrard and CJ Cowan of Bungie here.

Bungie’s Brian Jarrard has told VG247 at GamesCom that Halo 3: ODST, in between having an E3 2008 reveal being pulled at the last minute, an accidental reveal from senior vice president of Xbox, Don Mattrick and a name change from Halo 3: Recon, has been “a different product”.

“Yeah, ODST has been a different product for us a lot of respects. It’s the first time we’ve had a game that we’ve basically done on an accelerated 12 month schedule with a small team.”

But despite what it has gone through within the past year, Jarrard does insist that Bungie are still proud at what they have done with ODST.

“We’re definitely proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish in a short time. It’s been a first in many ways, but I think that the final product came out even better than we had hoped, and it’s going to speak for itself when it comes out next month.”

Go read up the full interview here, you’ll find out loads of “different” info on ODST and the recently announced Halo Reach.

Naughty Dog has said that Uncharted 2 will consist of about 40 percent puzzle-solving elements and 60 percent action.

However, that being said, the developers want you to focus more on the pacing, exploration, and action as the puzzles solving will be more subtle and seamlessly integrated.

“I think gamers are going to notice that it’s going to be a little more action packed,” Naught Dog’s Arne Myer told Kotaku. “There’s a little more tension, a little more action behind everything [Drake] does.

As far as cop-op goes, there will be none of that.

“We thought about whether we could have cooperative in the game,” Meyer said. “But the game is really centered around Nathan and his personality. It didn’t really make sense to do coop.”

More through the link.

SCEE boss Andrew House has admitted that Sony is going “head to head” right now with Microsoft.

Speaking to MCV, House said that the PS3 and PSPgo does have a fighting chance of taking on the Xbox 360.

“We’ve competing very seriously, head-to-head, with Microsoft in Europe right now,” said House, going further to say “and this gives us a major opportunity to do that more aggressively.”

“We have very high hopes for the new PS3 and think it will deliver a significant increase in our sales.”

More through the link.

Andrew House also spoke to VG247 on Wednesday. Get his thoughts on the PS3, PSPgo and why anybody looking forward to GT5 should watch the mountains here.

Interview by Patrick Garratt.

During GamesCom, Bungie’s community manager Brian Jarrard and director of cinematics CJ Cowan sat down with VG247 to talk a bit about all things Halo.

The guys also spoke a bit about the split from Microsoft, why Reach does not fit into the Halo trilogy,and how ODST is a new way to propel the missions and the narrative structure of Halo 3.

Loads more on past the break.

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