Category Archives: GDC 2009

2K Boston may be changing its moniker to Irrational Boston.

This speculatory information is thanks to both a trademark filed by Take-Two,and t-shirts sported by GDC attendees plastered with “jobs@irrationalboston.com” on the back.

Joystiq contacted 2K Boston for verification earlier today and the official response was “no comment” with more to be revealed “very soon.”

OnLive boss Steve Perlman has told Joystiq that people had “damn well better be skeptical” about the Cloud-gaming service, but has insisted in a lengthy interview that the concept works.

“They damn well better be skeptical. When I set out to build this thing, we looked at it and said, ‘Look, in theory it’s possible to do, but in practice we just didn’t know if it could actually be done,’” he said.

Perlman went on to talk about the process behind OnLive’s development, claiming he knew people would question the service when it was announced.

“We knew people were going to be skeptical,” he said. “And they should be, you know? But they would go and say, hmm, we’ve got nine of the top publishers behind this thing; do we really think these guys are gonna take their top titles, commit them for release the same retail window as you know, the titles when they come out for the consoles, and they’re gonna let us show games on the floor here, which are actually just being released the day that the OnLive booth opens, you know?

“The only reason they’re going to do that is, obviously, they’ve gone through tons and tons of testing as well.”

Hit the link. Well worth it.

Just Add Water has confirmed to VG247 that its upcoming first-party PSN title – Project V, a working title, slyly announced last week – is a cross-platform pew-pewer, old skool stylee.

“It’s first-party for Sony, so we can’t talk about it too much, but it’s a retro shooting game,” said company boss Stewart Gilray.

“It’s for PS3 and PSP,” he added.

Gilray said the title’s been JAW’s focus for some time.

“We’ve been working on it for about a year now,” he said. “We showed it to Sony last year and they snapped it up straight away.”

The game is to be fully announced at E3. A JAW Christmas card from last year may well give a hint as to what to expect.

Gears of War 2′s Rod Fergusson has told VG247 that specifics on upcoming DLC for the game will depend on the community’s reaction to the Snowblind map pack, released yesterday.

“The big focus is on Snowblind, which is out Tuesday, and we’ll see how that’s received, along with the title update,” said the title’s executive producer, speaking at GDC.

“I’ve been checking in on the forums late at night to see how people are responding at it seems to be pretty positive.”

Snowblind, the second premium DLC pack for Gears of War 2, added four new maps to the game yesterday for 800 MS Points.

It was rumoured before GDC that a third pack, supposedly titled Dark Corners, would launch in April.

Doesn’t look like it.

Dead Space received two awards during the 7th Annual Game Audio Network Guild Awards during GDC last week.

Audio of The Year and Sound Design of The Year were accepted by EA Redwood Studios for it’s space-horror shooter, while composer Wataru Hokoyama took home two as well – one for Rookie of the Year and another for Music of the Year for his work on PS3 game Afrika.

GANG is a non-profit focused on advancement and recognition is game audio.

The full list of winner after the break.

Via Gamasutra.

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Kotaku’s posted up some lovely-looking screens of of upcoming western sequel Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood, as well as some words from GDC.

The Ubi adventure’s out on PC, PS3 and 360 in June.

Guess everyone missed this in the rush last week. Hideo Kojima specifically addressed a question about Metal Gear Solid 5 at his Apple Store visit following his GDC keynote last Thursday, dropping a not-so-subtle hint that the game will be announced at E3 in June.

“I can’t really speak specifically right now,” said the developer, speaking through a translator.

“All I can say right now is that maybe we can do some announcement during E3.”

That’s what he said. Kojima said just in interviews the day before his keynote that he would announce a new game at E3 this year. Looks like it’s not going to be the biggest shock in the world when it hits.

Many thanks, Dan.

Nazis are brilliant. Yes, we’re aware there’s a pretty solid case for them not being that brilliant, but you know what we mean. These Gamespot screens of mad glowy Nazis are therefore doubly great, especially given the game itself is shaping up so well.

Get out impressions here.

Blizzard’s flattened a GI report from GDC, which claimed that Rob Pardo said the firm’s in talk with Microsoft regarding the next Xbox. He didn’t say anything of the sort, apparently.

“In the Lunch with Luminaries discussion, Rob said that Microsoft occasionally bounces ideas off of us, with no specific reference to any possible future consoles,” a rep told Gamespot.

“This should come as no surprise, as our games run on Microsoft’s PC operating system. We aren’t in discussions with Microsoft regarding any future consoles.”

Whoops. The original story said, “Blizzard’s Rob Pardo has confirmed that his company has had talks with Microsoft about the successor to the Xbox 360.”

No Xbox 720 for you, Mr WoW fan. Thanks, Shatner.

What’s great? Wolfenstein is. We were shown the Raven shooter at GDC and, without a doubt, it was one of the coolest games we saw during the entire conference.

Want to know why? Get full details on weapons, plot, mechanics and dominatrix Nazi women through the link.

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Peter Molyneux told MTV at GDC that Fable 1′s death mechanic was rubbish.

“We started with saying that ‘The way death worked in “Fable I” was just so tedious,’” said the Lionhead boss, talking of the process of constructing Fable II’s dying set-up.

“There are certain games that, as a game player — not as a designer but purely as a game player — I found very, very frustrating, which ended up as barriers for me going any further in the game. ‘Grand Theft Auto‘ was one of those games. I just found it super-frustrating to have to restart the game.”

Read 50 million more words on the subject through the link.

Blizzard designer Jeffrey Kaplan claimed at GDC last week that WoW players embark on a total of 16 million quests per day.

Further, from July 2007 to March 2009, 8,570,222,426 quests were undertaken in the game.

Over 2,600 quests were included in the original game, with the Burning Crusade doubling the figure to 5,300. Wrath of the Lich King put it up to 7,650.

What’s wrong with you all? Thanks, Kotaku.

Marvel MMO creator Gazillion is really, really busy. It’s got up to seven games in the works, in fact.

“We actually have six or seven titles that are in production right now,” marketing boss Paul Baldwin told Joystiq at GDC.

Gazillion, founded in 2005, was announced as being the developer of Marvel MMOs for the next ten years earlier this month.

The first “adult” game to emerge from the partnership won’t hit till 2012. A children’s title, based on cartoon Superhero Squad will hit in 2010.

Cliff Bleszinski’s told Epic fans to keep eyes open for a new game reveal from Chair, the firm’s wholly-owned developer in Utah.

“Our partners at Chair in Utah are working on a product that we’re going to be announcing at some point in the near future which is very, very cool,” the developer said in the latest Major Nelson podcast.

“We have our partners at People Can Fly in Poland working on some great stuff. We’re working on things internally – I feel that I’ve got five balls up in the air that I’m juggling right now,” he added.

“It’s an incredibly exciting time. Keep your ears peeled in the next year. There’s going to be a lot of great announcements.”

Epic bought Chair in May last year.

Bleszinski was talking at GDC last week.

SCEA’s director of hardware marketing, John Koller, has told VG247 that Gran Turismo 5′s release timing across “all platforms” is still a matter of seeing “what makes the most sense.”

Koller was responding to questions about the game’s PS3 release date, speaking at GDC last week.

“Ultimately, they are a developer who makes a lot of their own decisions,” Koller said of Polyphony Digital.

“But we are looking at GT5 across all platforms, just to see what makes the most sense.”

Koller fobbed off specifics on launch dates for further games in the series.

“Well GT5: Prologue’s out,” he joked.

“Seriously though, there is really nothing we can really say about it, other than it’s a franchise we would like to continue.

“So, other than that, we don’t really have any announcements regarding the game at this time.”

Last December, SCEE’s John Armstrong told a Spanish television program that we could expect Gran Turismo 5 by Christmas 2009.

Announcements related to both a PSP and PS3 version of GT5 are expected at E3.

Home boss Jack Buser, speaking at GDC to GI, has claimed that all large publishers are now actively looking at the service.

“Every major publisher is interested in Home,” he said. “Here you can speak directly to the PlayStation audience on the platform that your product is on.

“You have publishers and brands coming into Home looking to engage with an audience, but they also have the opportunity to generate revenue. It’s a model that makes sense for everybody. It’s kind of a perfect storm.”

Home has been used by more than 4 million PlayStation 3 owners so far.

There’s a full interview with the Home team here.

Hideo Kojima’s said he may do another iPod/iPhone title after the “success” of Metal Gear Solid Touch.

Hold onto that hat, though: this time it could well be something “crazy”.

From this G4 report of the developer’s visit to San Francisco’s Apple Store following his GDC keynote:

Finally, Kojima is open to doing another iPhone/iPod Touch game, but it might be something completely “crazy.” One of Mr. Kojima’s favorite apps is the lightsaber app. He would also like to do something that uses even more of the unique capabilities of the iPhone platform. For example, say you listen to a lot of Coldplay (his example, not mine)… if you then listen to Coldplay while controlling Snake, he might fight better. Interesting stuff.

Sounds mental. More through there.

Below you can see some footage of Batman spectacularly taking out muscle-bound goons in Rocksteady’s Arkham Asylum.

This movie’s from this week’s GDC.

We can only say that if the game plays as good as it looks, there won’t be a dry eye in the house.

Look down. Thanks, Kotaku.

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Some direct-feed inFamous footage from GDC after the break. There’s no doubting the looks of Sucker Punch’s open-worlder, but we’ve been told of control “concerns”. Hope it’s all OK.

Because we want it. Hit the link to see why. It’s out this summer for PS3. Thanks, Plainview.

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Speaking at GDC in San Fran this week, Blue Castle’s Izmeth Siddeek apparently said that that he wants a mere 6,000 zombies on screen at once in Dead Rising 2.

The information comes by way of Laura Scholl, product manager for Mental Mill, who released of postscript of the game’s presentation at the event. No actual quote is forthcoming.

According to Scholl, Siddeek said that “Dead Rising 2 deal[s] with the rendering of the greatest number of characters ever seen in a video game. Everything else needed to be subordinated to this requirement.”

More rendering madness over at MTV.