In an interview with Variety, Dan Houser was asked how the downloadable content for Grand Theft Auto IV was doing and if we should expect it by the end of this year. His response:
“I’m not sure. It’s going well. But we don’t know a date. We hope to be announcing that in the next few weeks. We’re still figuring out a few things. We’re more focused on quality than dates, always have been. But the development is going really good. It’s shaping up to be something we’re very proud of. That was our goal”
He also said that folks should keep realistic expectations:
“We want to give people a rough idea so their expectations are roughly in line. We don’t want them to imagine it’s this enormous thing that it can never be… “
Whatever this downloadable content turns out to be, I wonder if it’s too late. I mean, the kids have stopped talking about it and with so many other big titles out, who’s going to spend the money on this Xbox 360 exclusive add-on pack?
“What I’ve been saying to our development teams recently is that “Twilight Princess” was not a bad game, by any means. But, still, it felt like there was something missing. And while, personally, I feel like “Super Mario Galaxy” was able to do some things that were very new and were very unique, at the same time, from another perspective, certain elements of it do feel somewhat conservative in terms of how far we branched out with design. And so this is something I’ve been talking to both of those teams about.”
That’s a quote from an interview from MTV Multiplayer blog’s latest interview with Shigeru Miyamoto. I’m pleased to know that Miyamoto is still interested in pushing the Mario and Zelda franchises forward. Super Mario Galaxy was an absolute gem and I cannot imagine how an non-conservative version of that would be — mindblowingly awesome comes to mind, though.
He also goes into talk involving a bit of Spore, Portal and the upcoming installment of Punch-Out for Wii.
Peter Moore is quite the storied individual. He was the head of Sega of America and responsible for the Dreamcast’s launch. He was head of Microsoft’s Xbox division and now he’s the head of EA Sports division.
Well he had quite an interview with the Guardian’s Games Blog. The interview was so grand, it was split into three parts, here, here and here. However, let’s just grab the quotesthat made headlines (again):
Dreamcast was a phenomenal 18 months of pain, heartache, euphoria… We thought we had it, but then Playstation came out, that infamous issue of Newsweek with the Emotion Engine on the cover… and of course, EA didn’t publish which left a big hole, not only in sports but in other genres. We ended up that Christmas period not being able to get to where we needed to be – we weren’t far short, we just couldn’t get that critical mass…
Bless the Dreamcast and its short, but awesome life.
Electronic Arts isn’t the same Electronic Arts of the past. It’s quite different now with its EA Partners program which includes the likes of id Software and Valve. Today, Kotaku revealed the latest EA Partner: Armature Studio. Armature consists of the former Retro Studios big shots who left the Nintendo second party developer a few months ago. According to the interview, they’ll be working on a new I.P. for EA.
This is a pretty big deal considering these are the main guys behind one of Nintendo’s greatest franchises, the Metroid Prime series. I can’t wait to see what these guys do with the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 hardware.
Flagship Studios Hellgate: London was pretty much a make or break venture. Unfortunately, it broke them and brought down the promising Mythos along with it.
A month later, Bill Roper and Jeff Green of 1UP’s PC side got together and had an interesting chat. They talked about Flagship’s final months and the harsh reality of creating and maintaining your own game studio. The interview spans eight pages, but it’s all worthwhile reading since it provides a rare insight to what happens when things don’t go as planned.
For those who don’t know, Bill Roper worked on the Diablo series before leaving the company to form Flagship Studios.
Another one of them cage rattling interviews with John Carmack. I love his candidness. His latest quotable comment is this:
We still think the PC is a market worth supporting, but we’re not making decision around the PC. It’s probably more of the junior partner in the cross-platform strategy, although obviously, our day-to-day development is predominately on the PC.
I’m not surprised at all. He’s just reacting to the market conditions. PC die hards will probably be upset over this, but Mr. Carmack assures us that he’ll continue to support the PC platform:
We certainly expect Rage and the Doom project on the PC. We’re contractually obligated to have Rage on the PC, and I would be stunned if we did not do Doom 4 for the PC. It would just be wrong. Even if it was a marginal business case, we would still do it because it’s the right thing to do.
Put down your pitchforks, folks. id Software is not abandoning you.
For more reasons to get riled up, read the full interview from Tom’s Games.
According to an interview Mr. David Reeves of SCEE, talented people will be able to make money off the levels they create in Media Molecule’s LittleBigPlanet.
So, for example, what we’re trying to do with LittleBigPlanet is almost iTunes meets eBay in the sense that once an individual or a developer has qualified by producing certain levels or certain add-ons, they will then be able in the future to exchange these and make money out of them. Eventually, it’s feasible that you might well see the first LittleBigPlanet millionaire!
Even if you charge less than one euro, it doesn’t take many downloads if you’ve got a really strong LittleBigPlanet level for people to be able to make money. It’s a great way for people to show others what they can do.
It’s one part preview and two parts interview with CliffyB and Gears of War 2. Burly men with chainsaws guns shooting the crap out of subterranean monsters. Is there anything more manly? Check out the 16 minute 1UP Special. Lots of details about the game’s multiplayer. All of it sounding awesome.
You can also check out Dan Hsu’s preview from EGM. It includes new screenshots! Oh, and using the sniper rifle as a bad ass club is golden.
It must be quite gruesome for a developer to work on the same franchise repeatedly for many years . For DICE, it would be the Battlefield franchise. So what would DICE create if they had free reign over a project? Mirror’s Edge.
Below is an interview with one of the producers from DICE and Mirror’s Edge describing what their new IP is all about. It has potential to be something truly unique with its first person free roaming parkour. Unfortunately, there’s only stills available — no gameplay.
