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:
- New XBLA Alan Wake, New BioWare Game and Metal Gear Solid: Rising at VGAs
- Grand Theft Auto V Officially Announced, Little Info Given
- Silicon Knights Lays Off 45
- Warner Brothers Lays Off Around 60 in Seattle Area
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim This Week
New XBLA Alan Wake, New BioWare Game and Metal Gear Solid: Rising at VGAs
Game journalist Geoff Keighly (I think he is still with Gametrailers) let out some info about the upcoming Video Game Awards show on Spike in early December. They’ll be showing off videos from the new Alan Wake game (which was incorrectly named Alan Wake 2 by someone from Game Informer and later retracted) which will be XBLA only, BioWare will be showing off a new game from another of their studios and Konami will be showing off Metal Gear Solid: Rising which has been almost silent since it was first shown off at E3 a couple years ago.
Game Informer also came out saying they would have the first shot of the Alan Wake game on Monday. It is rumored to be called Alan Wake’s Night Springs and given it shares the name with the television show that you can watch on various TVs during the original game it may be based around those things. I personally can’t wait because I thought Alan Wake was one of the best games of last year.
Source: me
Grand Theft Auto V Officially Announced, Little Info Given
Well, we got the trailer and the announcement from Rockstar, but not much else is known about the game. It is confirmed that it is based in Los Santos and given the trailer it is probably based in present day. Rumors continue that you will be able to play multiple characters and there certainly are many characters shown off in the trailer. Outside of that though there isn’t much known such as a release date. I would guess we might know a little more before the end of the year, but who knows with marketing muscle probably going behind Max Payne 3 which comes early next year.
Source: me
Silicon Knights Lays Off 45
In sad, but not necessarily surprising, news Silicon Knights laid off 45 people this week. The reason is probably related to how badly X-Men: Destiny turned out, but it was also related to a game they were working on for an unknown publisher that got cancelled. The small group they have are supposedly at work on a “much loved” game in their repertoire. Hopefully we’ll hear soon about what it is.
Source: Joystiq
Warner Brothers Lays Off Around 60 in Seattle Area
This comes from a suddenly (and weirdly) tapped in George Broussard (from 3DRealms, original creators of Duke 3D) that about 60 people have been let go from Warner Brothers’ Seattle studios (Monolith, Snowblind and Surreal). The latest release from any of those studios was this week’s Lord of the Rings: War in the North that was developed by Snowblind. Sad to hear this, but given how Warner has been pretty aggressive at streamlining their games division as they build it up it wasn’t necessarily surprising.
Source: Joystiq through George Broussard’s Twitter
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Next Week
Your wallet is continuing to scream this week and will be for at least a couple more after this. Probably the biggest (i.e. best selling) game of the year comes out this week with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 releasing on Tuesday. Bethesda also releases Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim on Friday which will also probably sell quite well. Enjoy one or both games!
Source: me