Welcome to Beyond Co-Op, a weekly piece that talks about industry stories that may or may not be related to co-op gaming.
The stories for this week:
- Avalanche Working on Mad Max Game?
- Milo Canceled?
- Good Old Games Gets Stupid
- The Future of Halo Without Bungie
- Dead Rising 2, FIFA 11, Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock Highlight Releases This Week
Avalanche Working on Mad Max Game?
There’s a huge rumor that Avalanche Games, makers of the recently released Just Cause 2, is making a Mad Max game based upon the upcoming movie sequel supposedly coming in 2012. Further rumor is that Cory Balrog, director of God of War 2 has been brought on to head the project as well. I could easily see a Just Cause type of game in the Mad Max universe, couldn’t you?
Source: Colony of Gamers
Milo Canceled?
This seems to come up ever couple of months, but rumor is again that Milo on Kinect has been canceled and the contractors that were working on it have been moved to a Fable project or let go. It is believed that the Milo blueprint will be used in a future Fable game, but no details or if this rumor is true has surfaced as of yet.
My bigger question is exactly how many Fable projects is Lionhead working on? I love the series and really liked Fable II a lot more than the first game, but are they going to keep up on the 2-year or faster cycle of churning these games out? And what about the Kinect? It seems to be losing games/concepts from its stable.
Source: Colony of Gamers
Good Old Games Gets Stupid
Let me be the first to note that I don’t use GoG.com and really haven’t checked them out very often. Fact is I still physically own most of the games they have available, so I have no use for paying $5-10 for another copy. What they did this week was just stupid though. On Sunday they sent out word that they had to shut down the site and were very ambiguous as to why. Quickly rumor spread that this was a hoax and that they planned to announce something later in the week. This turned out to be true and the group was happy that the service got more press in a week than it has gotten in its two years of existence.
I don’t think this was the best marketing stunt and maybe the funny nature they were trying to convey doesn’t translate well here in the West (Polish developer CD Projekt, makers of The Witcher own GoG.com). It was just a bad decision and it will be interesting to see if they get more customers, stay at the same level or actually lose customers over this stupidity.
Source: Colony of Gamers
The Future of Halo Without Bungie
I’m sure we’re all still enjoying Halo: Reach out there, right? I’m still slowly going through the campaign as I start to ramp up with a heavy gaming fall coming up (not to mention a heavy gaming week here). Looking beyond this game though, what’s the future of Halo without Bungie? There have been rumors of Microsoft hiring outside developers for future Halo games like Gearbox (now working on Duke Nukem Forever to make the new games. The internal 343 Industries group, which oversees the IP, has grown in numbers as well which hint that they may also be developing it internally.
I’m also still of the camp that believes Bungie is not done with Halo. They are developing a new game (or games) for Activision within their 10-year publishing contract that will supposedly have a new engine, but who’s to say after this game is done that Bungie won’t split off their team in two or more and start working on another Halo game? I still think they feel the effects of the strong hold Microsoft had over the direction of the Halo games, supposedly made less of an issue with them allowing Bungie to buy themselves back to independence. However looking at it on the flip side there are obvious money advantages to keeping the Halo door open for Bungie should their new IP(s) fail with Activision. Also, who is to say Activision won’t start putting them to the grinder to get the game out since their money is at least partly involved with the IP(s) probably.
I’m not sure when the next Halo game will be announced. Microsoft said this week they’d like to get the games out faster than one every 3 years (ODST and Reach were but a year apart), so one would guess multiple teams are working on any number of Halo games, right? Will they do well though? The name will sell the game, but if the gameplay is vastly different will people still be interested? Microsoft is at a crossroads with its most valuable franchise and hopefully we’ll find out soon what the future holds for it. There are many stories in the Halo universe that have yet to be told.
Source: me
Dead Rising 2, FIFA 11, Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock Highlight Releases This Week
Some major games this week. Dead Rising 2 probably leads the pack and I’m really looking forward to playing it after playing through the awesome Case Zero. FIFA 11 looks like a major upgrade just playing the demo. Last time I played the series was 09 I think and the smoothness and control is even tighter in the demo. Add in the ability to play as the goaltender and this could be the best FIFA yet.
Finally Activision goes back to Guitar Hero’s roots with Warriors of Rock. I think Rock Band is cool and all, but with this release I think they’re tapping into the type of music that put the original GH games on the map: rock and hard rock, where true “bands” are the norm. Will it succeed? Who knows, but I can’t wait to play Rush’s “2112” ending in the game.
Source: me