Friday Downtime - 15/5/09 Feature

First and foremost, have you seen the supposedly leaked footage of Beyond Good & Evil 2 yet? If not, then don't waste another second and check it out here. Quite possibly the most stunning visual sequence we've seen on current generation technology to date, the footage is not to be missed. In other news highlights, Kojima's been teasing gamers about his next project, and supposed scans of a PS3 'Slim' appear show the casing of Sony's next SKU for the fiscally troubled console.

Do we believe that there's any substance behind the PS3 slim rumour? Initially we didn't, but once we sat down with a cup of soothsaying tea, we were more obliged to give the images some credence. More financial results popped up this week as Sony reported a £685 million loss while SEGA Sammy managed to halve its losses over fiscal 2008 in fiscal '09. However, these losses were still in the £150 million ball park and are further indications of the troubled state of the Japanese electronics industry which is due, in part, to heavy losses on export from foreign exchange rates that are hostile to the strong Japanese yen.

Towards the bottom of that SEGA Sammy piece, you'll notice an interesting little titbit of info on SEGA's new early retirement policies. It left us wondering about the announced retirement of Yu Suzuki earlier this year: did the legendary developer and SEGA publishing giant part ways amicably or was he pulled from his desk, kicking and screaming. That got us onto wondering about the unstable careers of legendary game developers and that perhaps the well known showbiz maxim, 'You're only as good as your last success,' is particularly apt for the game industry. After wondering about that for a while, we decided it was probably best to stop drinking the soothsaying tea.

Speaking of soothsaying, it seems Eidos Montreal has been doing some of its own with Thief 4 (which was announced earlier in the week, as expected). The studio's General Manager, Stephane D'Astous, seems to be unsure whether the title will see release on the current crop of Xbox 360 and PS3 consoles or next-gen machines (of which we still no zilch, nothing, nada). The only murmurings that have emerged so far appear to suggest that console manufacturers are eyeing a longer lifetime for current-gen machines than we've seen in previous generations. Some commentators have touched on 2011/2012 as possible launch years for the next PlayStations, Xboxes, and Wiis, but that's about it.

This really begs the question: why would D'Astous been unsure of whether or not Thief 4 will see release on an Xbox 360/PS3? Either the next consoles will be launched much sooner than expected, or Thief 4 is due to arrive later than 2010. If the latter is true, then we're a bit confused as to why Eidos Montreal would even bother announcing the game at this point. TVG is sensing another game that we'll have to wait eons for, very much in the vein of Alan Wake and Duke Nukem Forever [no puns on Forever please - ed.]. Whatever the case, it sounds like Thief 4 is very much a shell of a game at the moment, which Blizzard's next MMO is as well apparently.

But that's not all that was getting on our wick this week. It seems Nintendo of America has been toying with its hardcore audience again like a cat batting around a bewildered mouse (only the mouse has a tiny Wii clasped in its paws). Perhaps the mouse will even have a tiny skateboard peripheral clasped in the other paw as well, as Activision has unveiled its touted reinvention of the Tony Hawk series this week: a motion sensing skateboard. Stay tuned for more details on this particular peripheral with E3 looming ever closer. In other motion sensing news, rumours resurfaced this week of Microsoft's alleged plans for motion sensing technology on the Xbox 360. Again, E3 may well be ground zero for that particular bombshell.

Game announcements were plentiful this week. Among the official reveals were Codemasters' Ashes Cricket 2009, a renamed SEGA RPG called Resonance of Fate, and MX vs. ATV Reflex (check out our hands on preview and Q&A for more details). Additionally, Rockstar has promised that first details of GTA IV's second portion of DLC for Xbox 360 will soon be released, while Modern Warfare 2 got the first details treatment this week.

TVG Comment Of The Week:

gfh-77 comments: "learn to type your not sending a text message you stupid illiterate kids," on the Fable 2 boards.

We've noticed that gfh-77 comments frequently on the boards, which we certainly appreciate here at TVG, although we might point out that if you're going to insist that other people should type properly, you might want to spell the contraction of "you are" correctly (i.e. "you're" rather than "your"). Also, you might want to work on your grammar a bit.