When Lucasarts dropped the axe on 75-100 employees recently, we spoke with a number of the freshly-sacked workers, one of whom spilled the beans on a number of projects Lucasarts had in the pipeline. Some as developer, some merely as publisher. Some of the projects named include KOTOR 3 (with BioWare), Battlefront 3 (with Free Radical) and another LEGO Indiana Jones game (with Traveller’s Tales, obviously). If you were hoping at least one of them would be unveiled at E3, however, you can start making plans for mid-July again: Lucasarts have announced that not only will they not be announcing any of those (rumoured, mind you) titles, they won’t be announcing any new titles at all. Why? There’s “too much noise” surrounding the show. Apparently.
LucasArts tees up new Star Wars titles, addresses layoffs [VentureBeat]
Things are going from bad to worse for Tecmo. First Dead or Alive creator Tomonobu Itagaki announced he was leaving and suing Tecmo, while a totally separate lawsuit has been filed against Tecmo by Hiroaki Ozawa and co-plaintiff Tatsuki Tsunoda. Ozawa is the Tecmo Labour Union leader and Ninja Gaiden 2 lead engineer, while Tsunoda is the Ninja Gaiden 2 level design lead. Two key Team Ninja members! That alone does not bode well for Tecmo. But, this isn’t just a story of two guys trying to get some overtime, but also apparently of deception, falsified statements and a dead, beloved company president. There’s concrete evident in the plaintiff’s claims — so concrete that it could very well be the silver bullet for Tecmo’s current upper management.
I fired a couple of questions at (soon to be former) GDAA CEO Greg Bondar following his resignation from the organisation. Greg kindly provided a prompt reply.
For now, Bondar will be moving into consulting, which he says offers less reliable, but better, pay. It was this opportunity, and a desire to “focus his energies elsewhere”, that prompted Bondar’s decision, though he did acknowledge that recent events played a minor role. He’s also wrapping up a short-term project for a third-party.
While Bondar was unsure of who would replace him as CEO, he did confirm that president Tom Crago will handle his duties in the interim.
Finally, I asked Bondar to reflect on the changes the GDAA underwent and what it achieved during his 18-month stint. Here’s what he had to say:
No weekly PC sales charts this week. In their place: a monthly sales chart. The NPD group have released a list of the ten best-selling (at brick-and-mortars retail) games for the month of May, a list which while still lacking hard numbers does give us an idea of how well certain games performed. Like Age of Conan, which was the month’s biggest-seller despite only launching halfway through. Or the bottom-feeding budget compilation “15000 Games”, which scrapes into #10 despite failing to make any of the individual top-10 charts for the month. Guess it’s a slow-burner.
Greg Bondar has resigned from his position as CEO of the Game Developers Association of Australia, in order to “pursue other opportunities”, according to an email announcement sent out today. Bondar leaves after just 18 months at the organisation.
Bondar’s resignation has come as a surprise to me. I was putting together questions about Game Connect AP after the mini-uproar over speaker fees, which Greg said he’d be keen to answer (though maybe not so much now). To further emphasise the suddenness of his decision, while his last official day as CEO will be July 12, Bondar will be taking vacation leave starting tomorrow.
Regardless, I wish Greg all the best in his future endeavours.
DISSIDIA: Final Fantasy? 50 percent done. So says the game’s character designer Tetsuya Nomura in the upcoming issue of Japanese game mag Famitsu. This shouldn’t come as a huge surprise as only half the cast has been revealed. That, and Square Enix does like to take its sweet time putting out its games. There’s no rush, we guess.
Dissidia Final Fantasy [Videogamerx via PSP Hyper via PSP Fanboy]
Last night’s vids showing Snake snapping pics of MGS4′s “Beauties” while they moaned with…delight (?) in the background was some creepy viewing. Or compelling. Whatever floats your boat, man, I’m not judging you. As an encore of sorts, here’s a bonus clip. Aforementioned creepy moaning is still there, so those perched within office cubicles beware, but it’s now interspersed with…a catchy J-Pop dance routine.
As previously posted, Tecmo issued a press release calling out the foreign media for that rumoured talk of some three dozen Team Ninja member Tecmo exodus. The Japanese press release released today is slightly different and has been “localized” so to speak. [Note: A previous press release Tecmo USA released didn't have mention of Itagaki's "sexual harassment suit" while the Japanese was quick to point it out.]Today’s press release is the second one Tecmo Japan has released in the last two days that addresses the mass exodus rumours. Yesterday’s was a two sentence affair stating that the Western media rumour was not true. Today, which you’ve already read the English version of, is slightly longer and quite humble. Hit the jump for that:
While the Wii’s Clone Wars game fails to even light my excitement furnace’s pilot light, the DS game is sounding much more promising. Mostly because of this:
Jedi Alliance is designed, from the ground up, as a stylus driven game. Player movement, combat, Force powers and puzzle solving all driven by the stylus. The unique form factor of the DS has given us a great opportunity for the first time ever to give players direct control of the Lightsaber.
So Ninja Gaiden/Phantom Hourglass, but with Jedi? That’d be lovely, thanks. Another neat addition to the game is drop-in, drop-out co-op play: you’ll always be fighting with an AI opponent, and at any time a friend can jump in and assume the role of the “partner”. Oh, and you can play as Kit Fisto. Which should really be the game’s #1 selling-point, but then, who am I to tell Lucasart’s PR how to do their jobs.
