Fable 2 promises a lot. You can fall in love, have kids, fall in love with your dog (but not have kids with it), and also get into some gnarly sword fights. Check out this developer diary from Lionhead Studios showing off how they conceived combat in the game.
Last Friday, the EG crew welcomed Championship Gaming Series Dead or Alive 4 stars Swoozie and Master into the studio in Santa Monica.
We’ve got the video on demand player for you to watch all the antics, including an exhibition match between the two players and an interesting question from an EG viewer. Find out how many Xbox 360s Swoozie and Master have gone through due to red ring issues.
While we already found out that EA would be releasing full albums via download for their Guitar Hero killer Rock Band, they’ve been relatively quiet on what albums exactly would be released — besides their first one with The Who’s Who’s Next. According to CVG, Nirvana’s classic Nevermind is set to be the next.
From CVG:
During E3 MTV Games and Harmonix revealed plans to release weekly downloadable content for forthcoming rhythm action/music game Rock Band, and it now appears that will also include Nirvana’s Nevermind. According to reports, the classic rock album will be made available after the game launches at the end of the year - there’s no specific release date as yet. EA, which will publish Rock Band, was unavailable for comment on the reports at time of writing.
Speculation aside, it certainly seems like a logical move for EA to put out such a widely-loved album. Also, let’s not forget that Courtney Love and company have been whoring out that Nirvana library like nobody’s business. Hey, those elite diet pills *cough* cocaine lines *cough* don’t come cheap.
While we’re still waiting for BlizzCon to come along before we get some hands-on time with Blizzard’s next big step in their epic StarCraft franchise, we’re still having to rely on some fringe interviews and such to quench our ever-growing StarCraft 2 needs. Take a look at this video and see if any of your burning questions are answered.
In an interview with CVG, Epic Vice President Mark Rein said that because publishers are so concerned with getting the biggest return out of their gaming investments, that PC gaming will be defined graphically with how things look on the console — basically, if it can’t easily translate to a console, then it won’t sell enough to be viable.
In essence, PC gaming is going to continue to be an afterthought when it comes to game development. Of course, this all makes perfect sense. Why develop a game solely for the PC when that market is continually being diminished? Being able to spread your property across multiple platforms is the way to put the most amount of cash in your wallet. If a PC game can’t easily be translated to the console, then it’s not worth releasing.
From Rein:
“Consoles will pretty much define what the next five years of games look like on the PC. To be honest, and I’m going to cast a small pall on the industry here, I don’t think you’re going to get much higher [than the likes of Crysis, pictured] until the next generation of consoles. … We’re just barely coming into the sweet spot of the next-gen consoles… We’re at the point where it’s viable to ship games on these next-gen consoles and it’s going to be a gold mine for a couple of years. Publishers are generally putting their money where the highest return is, and in the past that’s been on consoles and I think that’s still the case. So if you build the game that’s a really super amazing high-end game, how do you make all the money you could make from that game, because it’ll be too high-end eventually to be on PS3 or Xbox 360.”
Hard to disagree and it begs the ever-growing question: Is PC gaming truly dead or dying? And, with this model in place, could something like the Wii be a precursor to a watered down console market?
Long-time Sony game designer David Jaffe has announced that he is indeed leaving the company and will head up a new studio with Incognito head Scott Campbell. Funny thing is, their new studio has just announced an exclusive deal with Sony — the mother’s womb is a safe, safe place.
Jaffe and Campbell’s new studio, called EAT SLEEP PLAY, is signed on to make just three titles for now for consoles and handhelds. The first game to come out of EAT SLEEP PLAY will be a PlayStation 2 port of the PlayStation Portable title Twisted Metal: Head On. In this refreshed console version, Jaffe and company will pump up the game to have 60FPS, improved textures, gameplay improvements and the inclusion of 5-7 levels that never made it into Twisted Metal Black: Part II.
Here are Jaffe’s words on the happenings:
But it’s what we wanted: to go independent and see where we could steer our very own ship. Granted, our new ship is no longer the grand, unstoppable beast that is Sony. Instead, it’s a smaller vessel, scrappy even, manned with a crew of experienced sailors who felt the need to venture out into the unknown seas and and see what we could see. And the cool thing is, a small as our ship is, it’s not the least bit scary. It’s exciting as hell. It feels right; like the time is right, the crew is ready, and the grand voyage is just beginning.
As always, I hope you guys/gals will join us on our journey (ok, enough with the shitty metaphor). As soon as I can reveal more about our new titles, I will share all. Maybe in the next 8-12 months, I would imagine, but who knows.
