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:
- Twisted Metal Pushed to Early 2012
- Diablo III Requires You to be Always Connected, No Mods Allowed
- Peter Moore Promoted to COO at EA
- Playstation Vita Coming Early 2012 to North America and Europe
- Sony Adds Sucker Punch to its Family
Twisted Metal Pushed to Early 2012
Late in the week came word from David Jaffe that the highly anticipated game Twisted Metal has been pushed back from its rumored October release to an early 2012 one. This is sad news, although maybe the recent news that Sony gave Jaffe carte blanche with the blessing to do an M rated game made this delay happen.
Source: Joystiq
Diablo III Requires You to be Always Connected, No Mods Allowed
Blizzard went firmly into dangerous waters this week when it was announced through early previews by the press that Diablo III requires you to be always connected and that there would be no off-line gaming like there was with Diablo II for example. Along with this it was later reported that mods would not be allowed for the game. Blizzard’s feeling is that they want to close he environment as much as possible to stop cheaters from cheating and pirates from pirating. They were also very surprised at the backlash they got from the net for these decisions. They obviously haven’t been watching the reaction as a lot of large publishers move towards these types of DRM systems.
Could the Midas touch finally be facing its biggest test for Blizzard? Will they relent and change course? My guess is the game is so deep in development and with a hope by the developer that it will be out before the end of the year there is no chance they’re going to backtrack unless they want a big delay.
Source: PC Gamer (online only) and PC Gamer (no mods)
Peter Moore Promoted to COO at EA
EA is in a major restructuring of its various developers. Along with this news comes word that Peter Moore has been upgraded to the Chief Operating Officer at EA, leaving his post as the head of EA Sports. My guess is that there are other changes on the horizon. Also this week BioWare was split off to its own label and then EA 2D has been changed to BioWare San Francisco.
Source: Joystiq
Playstation Vita Coming Early 2012 to North America and Europe
In other Sony-based early 2012 news is word from Kaz Harai that the Vita handheld will not be launching in North America or Europe in 2011. It will still release in Japan before the end of the year though. He gave a vague “early 2012” date to its release over here.
Source: Co-Optimus
Sony Adds Sucker Punch to its Family
Since the releases this week are like a ghost town yet again, I decided to put this news byte in that the developer of the inFAMOUS and Sly Cooper franchises is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Sony. Took them long enough to decide that honestly.
I’m off next week on vacation. Nick will be filling in for me as he comes off his own vacation. Have a good week people!
Source: me