Category Archives: GC 2008

Speaking to VG247 at Games Convention, Bethesda’s Peter Hines has indicated that you may not just be seeing one more Fallout from the publisher: you should be thinking along the lines of EA and FIFA.

“That’s why we bought it,” he said when we asked him to expand on recent comments that Bethesda was going to continue with the series past Fallout 3.

“We didn’t buy it just to do one and then to never anything again. So it’s sort of like confirming there might be another FIFA next year. It’s their franchise and they’re going to do another one. We bought it for the purposes of doing another one. If we were just going to do one, there’s any number of things we probably could have done differently.”

Fallout 3′s out in October in the US and Europe, and December in Japan. After that there’s going to be the 360-only DLC announced at E3, then we’re going to be waiting for the next full game, from the sound of it. Just don’t call it, “Fallout 09,” OK?

It can’t be Far Cry without a hang glider, right? Apparently not.

Showing off Far Cry 2 at Games Convention, dev narrative man Patrick Redding said the powerless flying thing was an essential addition to the game.

“There are about 14 vehicles in total, including various armed pick-up trucks, rovers, dune buggies and, of course, the inevitable hang glider we have to have for it to be truly a Far Cry game,” he told VG247.

We didn’t get to see the hang glider in action, unfortunately. We saw Patrick using a boat, if that’s any consolation.

Game’s out for PC, PS3 and 360 before the end of the year.

Blizzard co-founder Frank Pearce reckons you might be getting a fourth StarCraft II race “in the event” of an expansion to the RTS sequel.

“We don’t have the resources or time to add a fourth race to the launch of StarCraft II, but I’m sure in the event that we decide to do an expansion set it’s a feature that’ll come up for discussion,” the company boss told VG247.

StarCraft II will feature the three races from the first game – the Terrans, the Zerg and the Protoss – but a fourth had been considered early on in development.

“We talked about the possibility of a fourth race early on, but we felt like we had a finite amount of great ideas and wanted to make sure we focused all the cool, best ideas on the existing three races rather than diluting those ideas across four races,” Pearce added.

StarCraft II currently has no release date, but is looking likely for 2009.

In an interview with GI at last week’s Games Convention, Sims and Spore creator Will Wright said that the everyone’s favourite whipping boy, E3, isn’t even dead. It’s undead.

“It almost feels like a zombie at this point; it’s the walking dead,” said Wright.

“It’s such an abrupt end to what was E3, which had been this huge escalating arms race.”

He added: “I understand why they really pulled the plug on the big E3. Looking at the amount of money a company like EA would spend on it, it was ridiculous amounts of money just to be present and competitive with everyone else, so I think they were looking for a way to sign the arms treaty and de-escalate the whole thing.”

More through the link.

By Mike Bowden

Speaking with GI at Games Convention last week, Traveller’s Tales producer Rich Earl revealed that Lego Batman is set for it’s own TV series.

“We’re looking to do… a Lego Batman series,” he said.

“I think they’re looking at doing a one-off initially,” he went on. “And they’re basically able to utilise the assets, because our team has brought Lego characters to life.”

The cartoon “will use the [game] engine” and is “being done by a separate studio in the States,” confirmed Earl, who also revealed the initial episode will be 20 minutes long.

Full thing through the link.

By Mike Bowden

WoW: Wrath of the Lich King lead designer Tom Chilton has defended Blizzard’s decision to reduce the time it takes players to reach level 70 once the expansion is launched, saying that the game mustn’t become intimidating for new users.

Wrath of the Lich King will see the game’s level cap increased to 80.

“I think what really matters to us is that the game doesn’t become more and more intimidating for new players to take on,” said Chilton.

“We feel like that if we were to constantly increase the level cap and never go back and address the total time it takes to get from the beginning to the end, then we would see the game become a bigger obstacle for new players to start up and play with their friends.”

He added: “I think a lot of our player base actively creates new characters so these kinds of changes benefit those players also.”

Chilton was speaking at Games Convention last week. There’s no date fixed for the launch of Wrath of the Lich King as yet.

Blizzard co-founder Frank Pearce has refused to commit hugely anticipated RTS StarCraft II to a 2008 release, saying simply that the company still has “too much work to do” on the game.

“This year? Like, 2008? Too much work to do,” Pearce told VG247.

He added: “We don’t have a specific release date in mind yet. We still have too much work to do.”

And that was very much that. Frank’s one of the Blizzard super bosses (lvl 71) so you probably shouldn’t be expecting much in the way of new Zerg action this side of Christmas.

Of course it did. Open world death game set in the African outback assumes narrative cues from odd DS puzzle thing. Stands to reason.

“You see the blocks of text there,” Far Cry 2 narrative designer Patrick Redding said, pointing at the screen during a demo of the game at Games Convention last week.

“We kind of took a page from Professor Layton’s game on DS, to give the player a recap in text of what he’s been up to up to this point.”

The text aspect of Far Cry 2 isn’t finished yet, however, as Redding explained.

“You’ll notice these weird kind of weird little text strings that seem a bit broken,” he said. “That’s just because they’re not hooked up to the final text database.

“We talk a lot about the fact that our game’s story is dynamic, that we assemble the narrative on the fly, so what we’re doing is slotting in the names of characters the player has interacted with – like the different factions that he’s dealt with – and we dynamically update those text blocks in order to give him a description up to this point.”

Nintendo should charge Ubi Montreal, or something. Blatant theft.

Sony worldwide studio head Shuhei Yoshida has given the clearest indication yet that the firm is ramping up to the announcement of Fumito Ueda’s next game, confirming to VG247 that the PS3 project will be shown “soon.”

“I cannot tell,” said the exec was asked specifically if the new Team ICO game will be shown at Tokyo Game Show this year.

“But I can say that they’ve been working very hard since the release of Shadow of the Colossus.

“Soon you’ll see.”

Yoshida said that Sony’s plans for the Japanese event are yet to be finalised.

“Tokyo’s more focused on consumers so we’re still working on the intricacies,” he said. “Games Convention is unique of consumers and trade.”

The Ueda project has been consistently in the press recently, despite the fact no one knows a blind thing about it.

Ueda himself said in a recent interview that the game was still out of “critical” production, and Yoshida has also said previously that he’s excited by the title.

Go on. TGS. You know you want to.

Speaking to GI at Games Convention last week, Sony Worldwide Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida said that “free” is the way to go for PS3 and PSP services.

“We like to provide as many services as possible for free – we already provide our network access for gameplay for free – and the interesting thing about the network side and the Internet business is that there’s a variety of revenue sources,” he said. “Not necessarily getting people to pay, but with advertising and so on.

“Those are things we’re looking at, and learning how we can provide a service without people having to pay – but we still get our operation running with funding from somewhere so that we can maintain the level of quality we want.”

More through the link. There’s a full interview here.

Speaking to Videogamer at Games Convention, Wrath of the Lich King lead designer Tom Chilton said that the firm doesn’t hate consoles: but don’t be expecting WoW on a pad just yet.

“It’s really not that we have anything against consoles,” Chilton said. “I mean we love console games also. And I’m sure there will be a successful MMO sometime on a console. So it has nothing to do with that. It’s just more like a square peg round hole thing for our game. It just wasn’t designed with that in mind.”

J Allen Brack, production director, added: “World of Warcraft is designed as a PC game. It’s designed to have a keyboard and a mouse. So the controls and the control scheme that you have are very PC centric. If you think about mapping those controls and all those different type of buttons that you have to a console without a keyboard for chatting, it’s a very challenging proposition.”

More through the link.

Speaking at Games Convention last week, Quantic Dream boss David Cage said that Sony considered stunning thriller Heavy Rain to be “the most important title for next year.”

“A risk? I would rather say it’s an opportunity… If you listened to the keynote speech yesterday, David Reeves said this is the most important title for next year. I believe it’s an opportunity to expand the market, also.”

Cage was talking to VG247 during a demo of the title, adding that the game is also a hook for getting PS3 owners into “traditional” products.

“It’s an opportunity to get people on board with traditional games,” he said. “Everybody likes stories, like characters, likes emotions, and it’s an interesting way to get people playing on PlayStation 3.”

Heavy Rain blew away the competition at E3, showing a story of a female journalist investigating a series of disappearances and ending up in a house full of of dead, stuffed women. As you do.

More on later this week and next.

Ubi boss Yves Guillemot has told GI that Europe is the biggest cash territory for the publisher, bringing in more than 5 percent more revenue than the US.

“First, our money – the pound or the euro – is very strong and because of that the turnover from those countries is heavier than they used to be,” he explained during an interview at Games Convention.

“So for Ubisoft turnover Europe is actually more important than the US now, and by more than 5 percent. It’s become a very strong market for us.

“I think there are lots of customers that want to play – because in Europe we love to play – the only problem we had was that the games were becoming more and more difficult to play.

“Now that there’s more accessibility, some accessories that are helping people to have fun, I think this market has no limit in the growth it can have if we can make sure that the people that are coming in are staying.”

There’s a full interview here.

David Reeves is the man who keeps on giving. At least he does in this case, because both VG247 and GI had the same interview slot with the SCEE president at Games Convention, all of our questions from which are newsified here.

He did, however, say other things. And the biggest thing he said was that he believed the era of publisher console exclusivity was essentially over.

“I think we have to accept that exclusivity is not a thing of the past, but it is probably with publishers,” he said. “We might do a few things, where we feel that we need a push here or a push there.”

Reeves added: “We have to accept more and more that platform holders themselves cannot have exclusives unless they’re given millions and millions of dollars not to develop a particular game for one particular platform.

“But for developers, and you could take someone like Quantic Dream for example – a great game, it takes a lot of time to develop, they need a little bit of funding, external development. In exchange, it’s exclusive – that works. So exclusivity possibly with developers is more likely that exclusivity with publishers.”

You can read the full transcript of the interview here.

Speaking to Eurogamer at Games Convention, Hideo Kojima said he’s had enough of people asking about MGS4 on 360. Not entirely surprising, really.

“I’ve been doing a lot of interviews and stage shows, and half the questions are like ‘Will MGS4 be coming out on 360 or other formats?’, and in the near future I hope they’ll ask me about Metal Gear, about us, about our future projects, and will stop caring about the hardware,” he said.

Pressed on MGS4′s exclusivity and the possibility of an Xbox 360 port, Kojima reiterated that the PS3 had been chosen because he believed that the series’ success had been entwined with PlayStation’s, and admitted that “because MGS4 was optimised for the PS3 it is probably not possible”.

“But, you know, what kind of disturbs me sometimes, because a lot of people ask me about this PS3/360 question, is that it’s not about the hardware – I want people to look at the game itself. Sometimes I even feel like it should be on a PC so that people don’t ask me about hardware and platforms,” he said.

MGS5 CONFIRMED FOR PC. There’s a full interview here.

Koelnmesse boss Oliver P Kuhrt has issued a stark statement to Leipziger Messe in the face of the East German outfit announcing GC2009 dates. Translated, it says something along the lines of, “Give it up: everyone’s coming to gamescom next year.”

“It was to be expected that Leipziger Messe” would announce dates for a 2009 Games Convention, said Kuhrt.

“They will have to then do this, however, to a large extent without the industry.”

Handbags. Kuhrt said he’s received more than 120 inquiries from companies wanted to attend the first gamescom, including “almost all market leaders.”

Konami has been the first company to officially sign up for the show. No specific dates have been set it as yet.

More on EG.de.

David Reeves is a nice chap. He’s also president of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, so when he says things it’s best to take note. We caught up with Reeves at Games Convention in Leipzig last week after an impressive press conference at the show, and, as ever, he had plenty to say on everything. We’ve broken it down into easily digestible stories for you below. Because we’re nice like that.

• Reeves shrugs off FFXIII on 360 saying, “It’s still exclusive in Japan”
• Reeves on Home: “I can look you in the eyes and tell you everything is on track”
• Reeves: “Sometimes it’s an advantage to be last in Europe”
• Reeves: There will be no PS3 price cut this year
• Reeves: We’re a bit behind on video downloads, but we will get there
• Reeves: “I am supremely confident” that PS3 leads 360 in PAL territories – audio
• Reeves: Focus groups said music videos were key to PS3
• Reeves: You can play PS3 games while listening to streaming Vidzone movies
• Reeves: Euro PS3 music video downloads “might be a Sony service”

After the break. It’s a bit rubbish, but you can see what’s going on. There’s plenty of fighting and resurrecting to watch. The footage was shot at Games Convention in Germany last week.

More »

As you can see in this onlinewelten.com movie from Leipzig last week, Funcom’s Erling Ellingson has confirmed that Age of Conan has more than 400,000 paying subscribers.

The news comes after a Funcom financial report put the number of “customers” playing in the MMO at 415,000, but confusion reigned as to whether or not this included people playing on their free trial.

Thanks, Massively.

Speaking to VG247 at Games Convention in Germany last week, SCEE president David Reeves highlighted the difficulties in bringing the Movie Store service to European PS3s, but assured that SCEE “will get there” and launch the functionality on the Continent.

“On the video side, you will appreciate that when a movie comes out in Europe, if it’s a Fox movie, it’s not always Fox in Europe or Australia,” he said. “So we can’t take content from the USA and say, ‘I’ll talk to Fox headquarters in Europe,’ because they don’t have it, and that’s happened with several movies.

“We have to talk to a thousand different people to get the rights… And it does take a little bit of time to get that sorted out for Europe, and we’ve got all the languages and all the different cultures. We’re a bit behind, but we will get there.”

The US Movie Store was announced and launch at E3.