Tag Archives: microsoft gamer’s day

The artist formally known as Cliffy B doesn’t have the easiest job in the world. Being front-man for the Gears of War franchise is no joke. Luckily he’s man enough to take it.

“You’ve got to have a thick skin,” he said. “If I had a nickel for every time I was called a fag on the internet, I could retire. It’s just the way the fans are sometimes; you do a good job and they’ll hold you up in a chair and carry you through the streets. You screw up once and they’ll be the first to tart [sic] and feather you, and that’s the risk I take when I stick my neck out there.”

Full interview on CVG.

After the link. Just one shot of Rare’s Viva sequel, you lucky, lucky people. It shows a lovely camel thing in some kind of desert environment. See for yourself.

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Just one. Someone, somewhere, must have all these on a disc and is just dropping them out from his internet castle in the sky, or something. After the break.

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Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts dev lead Gregg Mayles reckons platform adventuring of old is over – and the new Rare game is the true evolution.

“It’s true that anyone wanting a carbon copy of the previous two games will be disappointed, so I’m not even going to make out that it is,” he said in a live chat with Rare fansites.

“What I believe it to be is an evolution of the platform adventure genre. The genre is too stale: it needed shaking up, so we’re trying something different, but within the framework of a ‘traditional’ Banjo game.

“It has a familiar structure, things to collect, characters to talk to and all the humour you would expect. I said on one forum that all we have done is to make the travelling fun. So that pretty much sums it up, we have taken the boring bit (travelling) and made it fun.”

Mayles went on to give an abolute ton of information on the upcoming game, which was announced earlier this week at the Microsoft Gamer’s Day in California. Fill your lunchtime with Rare bear.

Speaking at the Microsoft Gamer’s Day earlier this week, Xbox boss Shane Kim has finally put down perpetual talk of a Microsoft gaming handheld saying he’s pleased the company never entered the portable fray with Nintendo and Sony.

“I’m very happy we didn’t get into it, because launching a handheld platform is like launching another Xbox 360,” he said. “You have to be fully committed, as an organisation, from a resource standpoint, to doing that.”

“Frankly we’ve got a lot on our plate with Xbox 360 and Xbox Live. We don’t have any experience in that space. Our content assets don’t naturally lend themselves to driving success in that particular market. So we’re happy to let Sony and Nintendo slog it out.”

Read the full Eurogamer interview here.

According to this Eurogamer piece, SiliconKnights boss Denis Dyack’s confirmed that a demo of Too Human will be released on Live before the game’s August 29 release.

“We haven’t announced a date yet. Our goal is to try to get it out obviously before the game releases, and we’ll announce the specific timing of that shortly,” he said.

“But a demo is absolutely planned. We think it’s critical for the game. If things go as planned, gamers should get a demo well in advance before the game’s released.”

So there we are.

Video after the link of Cliffy B giving a heap of info on Gears of War 2, including curb-stomping, exploding meat-shield, a “gory, intimate violence experience”, the return of Carmine and tons more. Go look.

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As far as we know this Kotaku piece is the first actual playtest of Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts beyond the pre-embargo previews. Sounds as though Brian had a nice time making vehicles. There’s a very telling quote included there, right at the end: “Creating vehicles to complete the challenges is the crux of the game.”

Have a look.

Not content with saying he believes Gears of War 2 is the biggest 360 game due this year, Xbox boss Shane Kim has now gone on the record to say that he believes it’ll be the top 2008 title period.

“[Sony] launched with Resistance and we’ve sold nearly 5 million units of Gears of War 1. I think we won that battle,” he told Eurogamer.

“That’s why I believe it’s going to be the biggest title this holiday. Killzone’s out of the holiday, despite some of the earlier statements that were made. We’ll see what happens with Resistance 2, but we’ve gone head-to-head before. I still feel very confident in the quality [of Gears of War 2].”

More through the link.

Nice. We were hoping someone could be bothered to put all this up. Thankfully, it was CVG. Hit this for 40 million images of Too Human from the Microsoft Gamer’s Day in San Francisco. Give them some page impressions. They deserve it.

Speaking at the Microsoft Gamer’s Day yesterday, Gears of War 2 dev lead Cliff Bleszinski has confirmed that Gears of War 2 will not feature unicorns coming out of his ass.

“A lot of gamers were somehow expecting Gears 2 to suddenly come out and have big bright purple flowers and rainbows and unicorns coming out of my ass or something like that,” he said. “It’s just not that game. It’s not a very saturated colour palette, but we are going for large, beautiful open vistas this time around, much larger scale of battle – so it’s not just grey pillars, right?”

He added: “There might be other projects coming out of Epic in which I may have a torrent of unicorn leakage from my ass. The horn’s the hardest part, really.”

The quote’s from a full interview on Eurogamer about the “game” and shit, but we’re far more interested in Cliff’s ass. Show us your ass, Cliff.

The Eurogamer massive got a Kim interview too, the first bit of which just popped up on GI. Speaking at the Microsoft Gamer’s Day in San Francisco yesterday, the Xbox boss refused to be drawn on the states of play between his firm and Sony, saying only that the figures will tell the final story.

“I understand that Sony has declared leadership already,” he said. “We’ll let the data speak for itself.”

He also stopped the tides and rippled the fabric of universal matter by telling the site he thought 2008 would be a successful year for Xbox 360.

“What we’re really trying to communicate is that this is going to be another landmark year for Xbox 360,” he said, “mainly because we are really focused on the strategy of tremendous exclusive content. Titles like Gears of War 2, Fable 2, Banjo, et cetera. as well as the continuing leadership we have in the online space with Xbox Live.”

Hit the link for more. CVG’s already posted a full interview with the exec this morning.

As reported by Shacknews, Cliffy B fell short of confirming four-player co-op play in Gears of War 2 at the Microsoft Gamer’s Day in San Francisco yesterday, saying only that more information was coming at E3 and the game’s online offering will be “robust”.

“We’re not announcing anything about co-op at this time, we’ll probably get around to it around E3 time, but rest assured, it will be bigger and better,” he said.

“The multiplayer is incredibly robust. We’re not saying too much about it right now due to embargoes and whatnot, but lots of multiplayer maps, lots of modes. We’ll have the multiplayer functionality that gamers have come to expect this day and age.”

More through the link.

Speaking to Kotaku at the Microsoft Gamer’s Day in San Francisco yesterday, Team Ninja’s Tomonobu Itagaki said that he doesn’t plan on making any more Ninja Gaiden games after Ninja Gaiden II.

“Personally I think we were able to create the definitive 3D game in this series so I’m not planing on making any other games in the series,” Itagaki said through a translator. “So I hope fans treat this as a swan song for the franchise.

“I think we were able to achieve everything we wanted with this game so anything else would be extraneous.”

More through the link. For complete news coverage on the Gamer’s Day itself, hit this.

Update: Sorry, our major bad. The Leipzig reference in the interview was to the game’s German showing in 2007, not 2008.

Xbox boss Shane Kim confirmed in a CVG interview last night that Ensemble RTS Halo Wars will be shown at Games Convention in Leipzig this August, but that the viewing will be in a “controlled fashion”.

“We’re not showing Halo Wars here today because we wanted to focus on these titles,” he said at yesterday’s Microsoft Gamer’s Day in San Francisco. “When we show titles we want to show them when they are ready. We’ve learned that from a few games we showed too early, like Too Human.

“I’m excited with the progress we’ve made, Halo Wars is a lot of fun to play but it’s not ready to show yet,” he added

“Here we wanted to do more hands-on time and Halo Wars isn’t ready. And I think you’ll see when we show it again, it’s evolved a fair amount. And it’s a mix of multiplayer and single-player and we want to show them at the same time.”

For the full Kim interview, see here.

Looks like an exclusive. CVG interviewed Xbox boss Shane Kim at yesterday’s Microsoft Gamer’s Day in San Francisco, in which he reiterates that Gears 2 is 360′s biggest game this year, the console’s life cycle in general and confirmation that Halo Wars will be at Leipzig. Must-read.

Speaking to CVG at Microsoft’s Gamer’s Day in San Francisco yesterday, Xbox boss Shane Kim put a hilarious boot into rumours of a motion-sensing controller for Xbox 360 by saying that he’d never heard of the device.

“I’ve never heard of a motion sensing controller,” he said. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

The rumour of a Wiimote rip off for 360 originally came from MTV, and 8bitjoystick reckoned it was codenamed “Newton”. Just goes to show.

“I will say, look, we have a lot of research and development going on all over the place, in Live and in Hardware and we have a ton of success in the accessory business – and that’s probably a story that doesn’t get told enough,” Kim added.

“We’re going to continue to look at new ways we can introduce different things – the third parties are doing this as well with the music controllers. So there’s opportunities for us there too. We’re an R and D company at heart.”

Consider yourself told.

You either love it or hate it, and most people love it, so take the time to gen up on Lionhead’s fantasy RPG before it ships this “holiday”. Molyneux showed the game to the press at the Microsoft Gamer’s Day in San Francisco yesterday, and the reaction was good, from the quick skim we’ve had this morning. Read about it on IGN and Gamespot, if you dare.

Cliffy B, the man with the best hair in games development, showed Gears of War 2 being played at yesterday’s Microsoft Gamer’s Day in San Francisco. People wrote about it on the internet. There are previews on 1UP, Eurogamer and IGN. Lots of detail about the demo in all of them, so that should keep you happy for the morning.

Too Human’s co-op mode was shown to the press for the first time at the Microsoft Gamer’s Day in California yesterday. Is it good? Let 1UP tell you. Or IGN. Don’t let us hem you in, man.