Ubisoft has debuted the single-player story trailer for Splinter Cell: Conviction and it plays pretty much like one for a blockbuster movie; some guy flexes his Krav Maga muscles, there’s an EMP bomb unaccounted for, and POTUS is in danger. Who you gonna call?
Capcom had to “wrestle” with disc size, cut content may come as DLC
While Microsoft subscribes to the idea that size doesn’t matter and it’s all about how you use it, Capcom has been having trouble with the limp disc size of the Xbox 360’s DVD format. Lost Planet 2 producer Jun Takeuchi discussed the difficulty in developing the multiplatform title and being held back by the tinier DVD format in comparison to the PS3’s Blu-ray.
“There wasn’t especially any big trouble. More than those kind of difficulties, the edited content was way too much and dealing with that was more difficult than anything,” Takeuchi said. “This time, truly, the content that was cut was significant and at the end, we had to wrestle with disc space.”
Bigger may be better, but Capcom is comforting the self-conscious Xbox 360 with promises that the edited content may find its way through DLC channels. “I think we could be able to add that content at a later date as downloadable content.”
Final Fantasy XI not going anywhere
With Final Fantasy XIV on the horizon, there has apparently been some panic going around about Square Enix possibly shutting down the servers for their other, older online role-playing game, Final Fantasy XI, later in the year.
Not so, president and CEO Yoichi Wada says.
“There seems to be a rumor that FFXI is ending, but if that was done, we’d be in trouble,” Wada has informed via his Twitter account.
So FF11 is safe and sound. However its players will be presented with a choice later in the year, which is when FF14 is expected to launch for the PC, PS3, and perhaps Xbox 360 at a later date as well.
Conceptually Epic Mickey looks and sounds pretty rad, the combination of that awesome-but-slightly-messed-up concept art and Warren Spector’s involvement makes it seem like a darned promising proposal, though I fear many may miss out due to its current ‘Wii exclusive’ tag. However, a leap to the glorious realms of HD may not be completely out of the picture according to Disney game execs Steve Wadsworth and Graham Hopper.
“We have a very large audience base that has Wiis in their home,” stated Wadsworth at this year’s DICE summit, “that’s not to say that we won’t go to other platforms [in the future].” Hopper notes that the choice to develop for the Wii was based upon the fact that “the key mechanic [in Epic Mickey] is an ink and paint mechanic,” perfectly suited for the Wii remote. Hopper goes on to mention that had they known about the HD consoles’ motion controllers prior to development they would have “thought differently about it.”
Given that some existing Wii titles may be getting an HD upgrade, a similar treatment for Epic Mickeydoesn’t sound that far-fetched.
Crytek’s executive producer Nathan Camarillo has said that the challenges consoles put in front of the Crysis 2 developer have resulted in a more focused gameplay experience.
When asked if the consoles — or more precisely the Xbox 360 since the questions were asked byXbox-focused mag Xbox World 360 — were setting borders for Crytek and limiting how freely they could approach the game from a developer’s point of view, Camarillo said, “I wouldn’t exactly call this generation of consoles ‘limited’. However, the challenges have allowed us to avoid over-designing features, to keep the focus narrower and tight for a compelling experience on all platforms.”
Camarillo feels that working within the confines of these challenges has been beneficial as “in the end this will make for the best experience for the gamer”.
“…we will spend more time per feature, making it polished, rather than spreading ourselves thinly just because we can. Creative constraints can be refreshing.”
“I think the freedom of Crysis 2 will surprise console gamers. Crysis is not about ‘go anywhere’. It’s about looking at a situation from a great vantage point and then formulating a plan that you proactively initiate to defeat your foes.”
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