Friday Downtime - 27/3/09 Feature

The question with this week's news is where to start? The Game Developers Conference in San Francisco really did put the cat amongst the pigeons, blowing up a veritable hail storm of news from a city that's better known for the obscurity of its fast moving fog.

The various keynote speeches provided some of the most notable headlines, with Satoru Iwata sating the lusts of loyal Nintendo fans by announcing a new Zelda game for DS. To be honest, it's about time Nintendo announced a big title (last year's E3 was not pretty). Nevertheless, we did find Iwata's explanations of Miyamoto's random employee kidnappings pretty darn hilarious.

Hideo Kojima also got in on the keynote action, not with any significant game announcement's (he'd confirmed, pre-speech, that there wouldn't be any), but with the suggestion that Kojima Productions might opt for more of a westernised development approach for Metal Gear Solid 5, even to the extent of setting the game in an open world. Whether or not Kojima will have a hands on role for MGS5's development remains uncertain.

Elsewhere at GDC, Bungie seemed to suggest that it would be developing more Halo 3 content after ODST and then quickly retraced its steps, affirming that it has no plans for more content after ODST's release this coming autumn. Nintendo announced that Wii shipments had topped 50 million soon after Japanese site Nikkei.net had made very similar predictions, destroying sales records previously held by Sony's PlayStation 2.

Apart from a new Zelda DS game, there weren't many high-profile game announcements at GDC and perhaps the biggest unveiling was Max Payne 3, which Rockstar plugged away from the bright lights and glamour of the conference. Back here in good old Blighty, Eidos shareholders voted in favour of Square-Enix's takeover bid for the company by an overwhelming majority, although it doesn't look like the Japanese publisher is going to swallow up Eidos' assets Gordon Gecko style.

On the rumour mill, Blizzard is seemingly developing a brand new project. There are no details on what it is yet but Blizzard has confirmed that it definitely is not related to the developer's next-gen MMO project or another WoW expansion. Onto the Xbox 360 now, and with Gears of War 2's Snowblind expansion set for release this Tuesday, it seems Epic and Microsoft might have plans to release another portion of Gears 2 DLC entitled Dark Corners next month. However, despite suggestions that an announcement would be made at GDC, Epic remained tight-lipped on the matter.

Other rumour related news suggested that the original Call of Duty may be bound for XBLA and PSN, with a new PEGI rating giving the title a 16+ certificate. Call of Duty nuts were also spoilt by Modern Warfare 2's teaser trailer, which teased little more than further terrorism related plotlines and a predictable release date, although the absence of a Call of Duty logo anywhere in the trailer has sparked debate that Activision may just run with the Modern Warfare moniker for Infinity Ward's sequel.

The also ran news is still pretty juicy this week, including God of War running at 60 frames per second, EA doing away with DRM for The Sims 3 (PC fans rejoiced in the streets as if world peace had been declared), Molyneux naming Fable II's second portion of DLC, BBC's Watchdog giving Microsoft a good going over, Mass Effect 2 story info, and platform details for Bioshock 2 and DJ Hero.

Finally, a possible eight year wait for Resident Evil 6 came as a bit of a shock to us earlier in the week, although we suspect that this estimate may be inaccurate due to a mistranslation of the original interview with Producer Masachika Kawata. 2017 is, after all, a very long way away. 

TVG Comment of the Week:

"yo anonymous you are a butt head," someone posts anonymously on the Lost Planet 2 board while failing to note the hypocrisy of their own comment.