The document had been accessible early Tuesday morning. It appears to contain meeting notes, many of which detail Sega’s games. It seems to have been first spotted on French website, Objectif-Sega but has since been removed.

Kotaku was unable to reach representatives from Sega or Sony before the publication of this post, but will provide any update we receive on this matter.

If real, the document portrays conversations between members of Sega of America and Rob Dyer, the senior vice president of publisher relations at Sony Computer Entertainment of America, in what is indicated as a quarterly update with Sony regarding Sega’s plans.

Every major Sega game is mentioned in the document, often with details that appear to be either upcoming plans or at least ideas about what would the companies might pursue.

The document mentions a Bayonetta collectors edition that would include an action figure. No such edition has been announced. It indicates that a Sega product evaluator deemed the first level of this fall’s role-playing game, Alpha Protocol, as too difficult at the time and described it barely feeling like a role-playing game.

The alleged Sony-Sega meeting notes include multiple mentions of Sega working with Sony-specific initiatives. Sega’s Vancouver 2010 Olympics game, Iron Man 2 and Aliens Vs. Predator are listed as candidates for spaces or avatar item downloads in the PlayStation Home virtual world. The notes mention the possibility of Sony-specific characters appearing in a PlayStation 3 version of 2010’s Sonic & Sega All Stars Racing, though the notes strangely disqualifies a Sony mascot in favour of Microsoft-owned properties: “Open to DLC to differentiate PS3 SKU [version] – not ratchet and clank but other characters maybe characters from Rare or Fable universes.”

The document covers cult favourite series Yakuza, which has had two releases in the U.S. Two other Yakuza games, including the current-gen Yakuza 3, remain Japan-only games. Of the Yakuza games, the notes state: “Could put Japanese games directly on PSN for download in a special Japanese Import section (pricing $US9.99 to $US39.99 for full game). Might need to localize menus at least with subtitles. SCEA interested in helping on MKTG side if they can have period of exclusivity.”

The possibility of interaction between the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable is mentioned for Aliens: Colonial Marines, a game that was not yet announced for any portable system. The same option was also mentioned for something called Vanquish.

The final Sega game property mentioned in the document is Sonic, which is considered in the notes as a candidate for a “Best of Sonic” collection. The notes state that “SCEA would love PSN exclusive power ups/different game modes.”

The document also included notes about Sony’s plans for its motion controller and digital download store, which we’ve covered in an earlier post today.

Only on his new job for about two and a half weeks, Mike Hayes is the man who now oversees Sega West, the combined domain of Sega of America and Sega of Europe and the man who I asked yesterday to define, if such a term is possible, “Sega-ness.”

Hayes, who formerly had been running just Sega of Europe and years before that was at Nintendo, was taking meetings in New York on the penthouse floor of a midtown Manhattan hotel. Based in London, he was paying a visit to the territory added to his portfolio. Around him, in adjacent rooms, a line-up with a diversity that make even Sega’s innovative line-ups of its old Genesis and Dreamcast eras look homogeneous was illuminating TV screens. A few doors in one direction were Aliens Vs. Predator and espionage role-playing game Alpha Protocol. In the other, beyond more than half a dozen other distinct games, were Daisy Fuentes Pilates and a Sonic kart-racing game.

Is there an essence of Sega that unifies the company’s games? Something that a gamer unaware of the company logos on game boxes might still sense as a unifying aspect of Sega’s games?

“In some cases, but not all,” Hayes said, answering this early question with the thoughtfulness and lack of diplomatic self-censorship with which he’d field all of my questions. “When we are trying to do core games like Aliens Vs. Predator from Rebellion, I don’t think you’ll find any Seganess in that. However, there are a lot of games that we do do—whether it be particularly with our old intellectual property, like Monkey Ball, like with Mario and Sonic and … things like Let’s Tap—it’s that kind of slight risk-taking that Sega was renowned for as innovators that we still do and we still intend to do.”

Such a publisher winds up having to field from an outlet like this one questions as wide-ranging as the fate of its Aliens licence, its Sonic line and its heritage as a hardware maker. More on some of that later this week, but here’s our first batch of updates.

Aliens is one of the murkier Sega topics. The company announced in 2006 that it would publish three games based on the famous chest-bursting movie monsters. Sega showed Aliens Vs. Predator at this event, demonstrating how games can play as a human marines or a Predator. Still under wraps is what playing like an Alien will be like. But this game wasn’t expected to be the first Aliens game from Sega. That was going to be the Gearbox-developed Aliens: Colonial Marines shooter or the now-canceled Obsidian-developed Aliens RPG.

“The Gearbox project was moving along,” Hayes said, recalling when the decision was made to take Colonial Marines out of the lead position. The game wasn’t as far along as Aliens Vs. Predator, which originally wasn’t backed by Sega. It was being made by Rebellion for publisher Vivendi, until that support ceased following Vivendi’s 2008 merger with Activision. “There was an opportunity for us to take that.” Its development progress put Gearbox’s game into the second slot, to be released “a good period after” AvP, according to Hayes. The RPG won’t be third because “it just wasn’t coming along to the plan that we thought.”

Might the newly announced, Ridley Scott Alien prequel project be a source of Aliens inspiration for Sega? “We’re quite excited about that and buzzing from the news of that,” Hayes said. But of the third game, Hayes would only say, ” We’d like to think we’ll be doing a third project but at the moment we haven’t confirmed what the third project will be.”

Another hyped grouping of Sega games has been its trio of Wii games targeted to the demographic of gamers that prefers a good headshot or chainsaw kill to an interactive sit-up routine: House of the Dead Overkill, MadWorld and The Conduit. Hayes views their fortunes as mixed. Sales reports don’t show blockbuster numbers for any of the games, but Hays said, “I just don’t think, categorically, that you can therefore conclude that mature games won’t work on Wii.”

Hayes deemed profane Grindhouse-style in-rails shooter House of the Dead: Overkill a “big success in Europe,” even though it performed less spectacularly in America. Hayes said the game’s budget-priced Wii predecessor, which compiled two earlier games in the series, continues to do well, suggesting there’s a future to this line. “We’re still very keen on the House of the Dead franchise.”

The Conduit can also be deemed a success, Hayes said, qualifying its performance as a solid one in a season that has seen a pre-holiday Wii hardware and software “dip.” The company has shipped 300,000 copies of the game worldwide and sold through more than half of them to gamers, about 100,000 in the U.S., according to figures from Segaof America VP of marketing, Sean Ratcliffe who attended our interview.

It is the mostly black-and-white, hyper-violent MadWorld that Hayes dubbed a “disappointment” for reasons he can’t yet nail down. “It could be the consumers didn’t like the art style,” he said. “It could be the consumers had enough Mature-rated games to play on 360 and PS3 and didn’t need a new experience on Wii.”

Hayes sums up the mixed success of those titles with a sanguine recognition that any grouping of games will have its hit, its flop and some in-between performers. “That’s video games,” he said. And it’s not the end of this Wii gamer narrative from Sega. ” You will see more—I wouldn’t say Mature as in M—but you will definitely see more hardcore games from us on the Wii platform.”

MadWorld was part of a second grouping of Sega titles, those developed by Platinum Games, the company led mainly by former design stars at Capcom. Bayonetta, now releasing in early 2010 in the U.S. will be the second, along with DS game Infinite Space. Hayes said there will be at least two more Platinum Games titles published by Sega beyond that, but wouldn’t provide details nor confirm if either of those is the previously-announced game being developed by heralded Japanese game maker Shinji Mikami.

One of the biggest hits for Sega in Japan has been its Yakuza series, a line of story-driven brawlers set, mostly, in modern Tokyo and crafted with the help of a Japanese crime novelist and Toshihiro Nagoshi, the classically eclectic Sega developer who also dreamed up the kid-friendly Super Monkey Ball. Yakuza may be the Japanese series that most closely matches the urban antisocial vibe of the Grand Theft Auto series, but its two PlayStation 2 releases in America have sold poorly. A third PS2 Yakuza was not brought to America. A current-gen game, Yakuza 3, made its mark in Japan in February. The third is absent from Sega’s announced U.S. release schedule. “We’re looking into it,” Hayes said, remarking that it would require “massive localisation” work and that, yes, he’s aware of the dedicated fans here clamouring for its release.

Hayes answered that Yakuza question outside of our interview, truth be told. We’d wrapped up. I was at the other end of the penthouse, preparing to play Mario and Sonic at the Winter Olympics after commandeering Luigi on bobsled I saw Hayes and had to ask. Imagine the ability to transition from playing character-mascot Olympics to a discussion of a crime-filled city adventure, all without leaving the same publisher’s demo hotel suite: Maybe that is the definition of “Sega-ness”

There’s a key difference! Unlike licensed fare, which are forced to stick to the plot and characters of the film, these games simply take a motivational cue from an existing movie and run with it. Whether that be in terms of visual design, themes, the relationship between characters, it doesn’t matter; these are just some of the games inspired by a summer blockbuster, and they wear that inspiration proudly on their sleeves.

Any others people can think of they’d like to share?

Independence Day / Star Fox 64

While the Star Fox series has tipped its hat to many science fiction staples over the years, none are as blatant as Star Fox 64’s stage on Katina.

From the enemy fighters to the landscape to the protection of a prominent building from a large, saucer-shaped mothership, it doesn’t just borrow from ID4, it lifts entire segments. Some people say even the music is modelled on Independence Day’s score.

Just a shame there’s no animal version of a wasted Randy Quaid up there.
Saving Private Ryan / Medal of Honor: Allied Assault

In 1998, moviegoers were shocked by what is still widely regarded as the most graphic, confronting sequence ever seen in a war movie. Through a use of shaky-cam and special effects, Steven Spielberg depicts the Omaha Beach landings on June 6, 1944 with an unnerving sense of intimacy, bullets whizzing past your head in surround sound, bodies exploding all over the screen.

Then, in 2002, gamers got their chance to actually take part in the sequence. Medal of Honor: Allied Assault followed the events of the film’s introduction almost to the letter, from a disastrous beach landing to a deadly crawl up the beach to the storming of the German fortifications.

And it’s not just the opening that models itself on Saving Private Ryan; there are subsequent levels in the game that also reference locations visited in the film. Then again, with Spielberg having helped write the events of the game, that shouldn’t have been a great surprise.
Star Wars / Final Fantasy XII

Now this one, this one doesn’t seem as obvious. Final Fantasy XII – a Square Enix RPG – being heavily influenced by Star Wars? But it’s true.

While art director Hideo Minaba says of the game “I’ll just say that I’m a fan. I wouldn’t say that [Star Wars] an influence”, we don’t believe him for a second. The game is about a young blonde boy who yearns to take to the skies and escape the grip of a totalitarian empire on his desert home. He’s accompanied by a shifty, though good-hearted pirate. Who in turn is accompanied by a stoic, furry friend. There’s also an old-warrior-cum-mentor for the boy, a bounty hunter after the pirate, and even some Jawas.

Come on, Minaba. Fess up. It’s OK! Everyone loves Star Wars.
Aliens / Everything

Aliens was released in 1986. And almost every single game that involves men fighting in space has taken something from it. Halo borrows from its aesthetic (Pelican dropships and assault rifles). Halo also borrows from its cast (Sgt. Johnson). Countless games have named their protagonists “Space Marines”. The xenomorphs – and their face huggers – are another gaming staple. And sentry guns? Yeah, they’re from Aliens as well.

It’s shocking the influence this movie has had on an entire medium. As 2K’s Stephen Alexander told Totilo the other day, it’s so embedded in the imaginations of designers and artists that often people reference it without even realising it. Its legacy, whether artistically or in terms of its plot or gadgets, has been copied by so many games over the years that those staples – the marines, the weapons, the aliens – are now seen as part of gaming’s mythology, not that of Aliens.

1975, Jaws — “It was the Village East theatre in Birmingham, Alabama. And we rode in my sister’s husband’s Trans Am…I have certain flashes of scenes, like the scene where Roy Scheider pulls the licence plate out of the stomach of the shark. I remember that. They’re just flashes. I remember it being very scary. My brother was traumatized, to this day. I loved it.” — Twisted Metal and God of War creator David Jaffe, born in 1971

Video games all but smell of popcorn. They have been influenced by the movies, arguably more so than they have been by any other art form, save for other games. And the movies that influence them most appear to be the biggest, the summer blockbusters.

Play a game or simply visit a game development studio — watch for the posters, the action figures or listen to the mentions in casual conversation — and the influence of summer movies is apparent. A week can’t go by without noticing the sway big movies have on creators. Last Wednesday, while showing Kotaku his game The Saboteur, Pandemic designer Tom French cited Indiana Jones’ bigness and coolness of action as an influence on his game’s anti-Nazi adventure. Over the weekend as I neared the end of Ghostbusters: The Video Game — itself an offspring of summer movies — I saw a late-game scene in which one of the heroes flees from a massive rolling boulder.

“[Summer movies] are touchstones in a sense they are generational touchstones,” Stephen Alexander, veteran gaming artist at 2K Boston told Kotaku. “Games tend to reference them a lot, because the people who are making them are making them for people who are like themselves. Or they make the assumption, that because I like this, the audience will like this.”

Prints of Aliens and Star Wars can be lifted from Gears of War and Halo, Star Fox and Final Fantasy. Also, the Indiana Jones films and Predator. T2 and Tron. Jaws. Top Gun. Independence Day.

1981, Raiders of the Lost Ark — “Indiana Jones meant nothing to me. It looked like a boring Western. I had no interest in it. I remember watching the review on Siskel and Ebert in the house with my parents — the whole family was over — and I was like, ah that seems kind of cool, whatever. My dad said, ‘Yeah let’s go see that.’ …It was sold out, so we sat in the car, which I think was this 1970s-era brown Cadillac. And we just sat there for two hours, hanging out as a family, waiting for the next show to start. Eventually we got in, and, I’m not shitting you, it changed my life. It changed my fucking life. This is what I want to do. To live in that world and to be in that world, not so much Indiana Jones’ world — though that would be great — but the world of creativity and escapism and summer excitement in terms of film and video games… It just opened the world of geekdom and film-loving and it affects me to this day.” — David Jaffe

Summer movies touch everyone, not just game creators. But they may have a stronger grip in a community where it’s not uncommon for a development studio to shut down for the afternoon so the team can catch the latest summer flick at a rented theatre. That was a mandatory outing just a few Fridays ago, for 2K Boston, when they went to see Up.

“The great thing about the blockbusters is having the common vocabulary,” 2K Boston designer Bill Gardner said. “Who doesn’t talk about the Predator’s cloaking device, whatever the hell it’s called? And the T1000 and all that stuff, constantly touching on these reference points.”

In the lingua franca of video games, George Lucas is king. “Star Wars pops up all the time,” Gardner’s colleague at 2K Boston, Stephen Alexander, said. “And that’s where a lot of games draw from because it is such an iconic journey to go on and it has such emotional resonance and pays off so well.”

But game creators don’t borrow from all the summer hits of the ’80s and ’90s. Alexander may see some Goonies in Zelda, but he guesses that’s just him. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off doesn’t seem to have informed many games. Back to the Future’s influence, if it exists, is subtle.

1982, E.T. — “I remember seeing it at the Brooklyn Mall theatre and [film company people] handing out the buttons and I was just like, ‘Oh my god, I got a button.’ And now the PR department is like, ‘Big fucking deal, we made a million buttons.’ But to a kid in Alabama who was in love with the movies, especially Spielberg and Spielberg’s movies, this was like the Holy Grail.” — David Jaffe

For all the love E.T. gets, it’s had only a light touch on games. Alexander has a theory why. “The real power of E.T. was that emotional bond between E.T. and Elliott,” he argued. “Emotional resonance is something that games are still wrestling with… I haven’t seen too many games that have managed to pull that off.” Ico is the only game he can think of that fits.

The more bombastic, escapist summer movies exert the most influence. They are, according to developers like Alexander and Gardner, parallel works to video games: They share the goal of escapism. The best blockbuster movies and the best blockbuster games take you out of yourself, on a ride.

1983, Return of the Jedi — “[My mom] had come to check me and my neighbour out of sixth grade. We were going to go to like the first show at one o’clock. …I was so excited, I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. The word got out and my math teacher, Mrs. Vance, who to this day I don’t forgive, basically had a shit fit about it and ended up calling my mum and stuff. It became this big deal and she wasn’t going to let me — whatever the fuck — graduate sixth grade. Ultimately, I ended up going to the movie, and I remember waiting in line. It was all the people who show up for a summer movie the first day. It was a big deal. …And I remember, after that point, really trying to recreate that for the rest of my junior high and high school experience. I remember hoping — hoping so bad — that Willow would have this huge line and it never really did.” — David Jaffe

Some developers bristle at this or at least laugh off the overwhelming influence the summer movies have. Alexander and Gardner’s boss, Ken Levine, said as much to me in January 2007: “Most video game people have read one book and seen one movie in their life, which is Lord of the Rings and Aliens or variations of that. There’s great things in that, but you need some variety… Look, I just steal from other sources.”

Aliens is the one that gets the eye-rolls a lot. Another drop-ship? Another group of space marines? Another tough-talking black sergeant? Another drab colour palette? “When it came out, Aliens’ visual design was so amazingly fresh and almost mind-blowing, it’s not surprising that so many people have taken it and used it to make their space game,” Alexander said. “It is a rich ground to place a game in, but it seems like people have gotten a little bit lazy in using this visual language at this point.”

But don’t blame the summer movies alone for this, Alexander said. “A game creator has a brilliant flash of inspiration and they mimic something from Aliens, for example, and it’s incredibly successful and then other creators mimic that game. I don’t know that it’s everybody drawing from the same source. I think games are maybe borrowing too much from each other in some ways. You fall into the ‘it worked once — let’s not be risky — and do it again.’”

1989, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade — “When Last Crusade opened I was such a total fucking geek. I didn’t care. I was in high school. The cement had dried on what kind of geek I was going to be. My brother, with me and a couple of my buddies, we all had logos of Last Crusade painted on the back of our cars like it was homecoming.” — David Jaffe

There’s another draw the summer films have for game creators and the publishers they work for: Bigness.

There’s spectacle that surrounds the release of the film expressed in long lines, big ads, talk-show guest appearances, commercials, souvenir cups, national — international — media attention. It’s natural to want that.
“The spectacle around the summer blockbusters is something to envy,” Gardner said. “You want to break into the mainstream and get people talking, but when you come down to it, as envious as I may be, I try to focus on what we’re doing right more than anything else. When it comes down to it, I don’t know if we’ll every be able to emulate that type of hype.”

Still, while the siren song of summer movie status can be hard to resist, it can cause problems when game companies misuse the model. Taking the rate of explosions from a Michael Bay movie and injecting it into a game won’t make the game as exciting as the Bay movie. Even a summer movie fanatic like David Jaffe knows this. Borrowing a key scene — the visuals, the audio — doesn’t play to gaming’s core strength, interactivity. So developers should best bear their influence with caution. A little nod here or there can be a nice touch, of course.

2005, God of War — “God of War is the game I always wanted to make. And there’s a huge influence of Raiders of the Lost Ark in God of War. Pandora’s Box is the Greek mythology version of the Ark of the Covenant. Actual moves that Kratos does in God of War are directly an homage to what Indy does in Raiders of the Lost Ark. When Indy kicks over that statue when he’s in the Well of the Souls, it’s the exact same animation — obviously Harrison Ford or the stuntman did it for real — we had Kratos mimic what he did with his body with the giant column when he first gets to Athens.” – David Jaffe

So maybe the summer movie blockbusters are safe from video games ripping them off wholesale. And maybe games will continue to find their own way to develop as a unique medium. In fact, games have already been seen to be exerting their own influence on the summer films: see the sidescrolling action sequence in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones or the increasingly video-game-like action scenes and car chases in so many other summer films, like Terminator Salvation and The Bourne Ultimatum.

That doesn’t mean some creators won’t want you to feel that summer movie feeling when you settle down in front of one of their games.

2009, Eat Sleep Play — “There is a literal aspect to the influence these things have had. But then, more importantly, there is a philosophical impact that the summer movies have had from a standpoint of wanting to provide, for my audience — look I understand that we don’t make movies, we don’t reach as big of an audience — but I still take the responsibility of the audience we do speak to very seriously. And, as much as I look at the works of [Flow and Flower development studio] That Game Company or [Ico creator Fumito] Ueda when he does Shadow of the Colossus, I’m so okay leaving that level of emotion and that level of meaning to someone else. I want to be the guy who provides the escape. I want to be the guy who provides the video game equivalent of the summer blockbuster.” — David Jaffe, co-founder of game development studioEat Sleep Play

(Movie poster images via the Internet Movie Poster Awards site.)

A posting on the Obsidian forums from a forum administrator, picked up by Giant Bomb, attempts to clear the air by noting “it is true that we are no longer working on the game, and we wanted to finally announce that officially to everyone who has been following its development.” In case there was any confusion about that, the post ends saying that Aliens RPG is “no longer a product that is in development.”

Sega also confirmed in a statement that the title is kaput. “At this point, SEGA has no plans to move forward with the Aliens RPG,” says official word.

The role-playing game from the dev team responsible for Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II and the forthcoming Alpha Protocol was announced in December of 2006, but was never shown publicly.

Sega still has plenty of Aliens licensed games coming down the pipe, with Aliens Vs. Predator and Aliens: Colonial Marines shooting for every platform that can handle ‘em.

The Official State of Obsidian’s Aliens RPG, by The Guildmaster [Obsidian Forum Community via Giant Bomb]

There were entries covering everything from Hellboy to Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, but the best are those we’ve selected below, with locations modelled from Blade Runner, Aliens, 5th Element and even Oldboy, teasing us with a screen from the best side-scrolling beat ‘em up never created.

Blade Runner

Fifth Element

Aliens

Oldboy

Kill Bill

Indiana Jones & the Last Crusade

X-Men 2

Scene From A Movie [Game Artist, via RPS]

If you’re an Alien fan, that is. If not, this little homemade horror may seem like the biggest waste of a PlayStation 3 ever.

The tattoo artist/case modder responsible for this creation used (and burned himself with) super heated epoxy putty and Games Workshop’s Chaos Black paint for the finish. He had to settle for a layer of gloss instead of sanding it — it sounds (and looks like) a bitch to smooth out.

The sculpt is as hard as a metal casting and permanently welds itself to everything, especially the plastic top. And it’s only on the top panel and door so he can switch it out if he gets a new one.

And if anyone’s interested, this is how I explained it to him; It takes ALOT more work than a portrait tattoo, which I would charge $300 for. So if I had to do something like this again… $300.

In Space, No Alien PS3 Case Mod Can Hear You Scream [Gizmodo via Cyberpunk Review via technabob]

Ghosts push aside alien abductions, werewolf infections and nightclubbing vampires to become the sole element of the occult in The Sims 3.

There’s always something supernatural in every Sims game. From werewolf babies in the Sims 2 Pets expansion all the way back to alien abductions in The Sims (which did not result in pregnancy), producers have slipped something strange in to make gameplay that much more interesting.

Sims 3 Associate Producer Grant Rodiek is no exception. One of his many pet-projects in the game is the “playable ghosts” Opportunity. Opportunities in Sims 3 are like mini quests – they appear every so often in one of the Sims’ sub-menus as optional tasks your Sim can complete to earn special bonuses or rewards.

Rodiek wouldn’t go into too much detail on how the Ghost Opportunity worked, but he said completing it was a walk in the park compared to how hard becoming a werewolf was in The Sims 2.

As a consolation, he took a sim to the town graveyard to show me another facet of the ghostly occult in Sims 3. You can send a sim into the stone mausoleum the way you would send them off to work in The Sims 2. Text options will pop up, letting you choose what your sim should do down there in the dark catacombs. Good things might happen, bad things might happen; or, he hinted, your Sim might not make it back.

New screens below:

An ex-Obsidian developer’s Linkedin profile lends further credence to rumours that Sega’s action role-playing game set in the Aliens universe is no longer a going concern.

The Linkedin profile, discovered by Strategy Informer, belongs to ex-Obsidian designer David Condor. The resume section of the public profile lists Obsidian Entertainment, as well as the most current project he had been working on.

Designer for canceled third-person action Aliens RPG (Xbox 360, PS3, & PC)

The profile goes on to list the specific areas of the game that Condor worked on, perhaps giving us insight into what might have been.

— Responsible for the planning, layout, setup, and tuning of multiple large areas including a Vertical Slice
— Worked directly with a team of Animators, Artists, Sound Designers, and Writers to ensure consistent area vision and to maintain fun gameplay, visual storytelling, and the atmosphere of the Aliens universe
— Worked with other Designers to contribute to and improve on the vision of game
— Designed, Scripted and Balanced Major Combat Encounters and Boss Battles
— Designed, Implemented, and Iterated on Missions and Scripted Scenes
— Created and Iterated on initial Area layouts using XSI
— Worked with programmers to develop & improve on a new In-House Game Engine & Tools

Of course this isn’t official confirmation by any means, but it certainly supports earlier reports of the game’s cancellation and layoffs at the developer.

Ex-Obsidian’s CV confirms Aliens RPG project has been ‘canceled’ [Strategy Informer]

Bit hard not to be excited about Gearbox’s new Aliens shooter. But how can we plan our excitement schedule if we don’t know when the game’s coming out?

A presser sent out by Sega Europe today has the game tentatively slated for a “Q1 2009″ release. That’s obviously not a calendar Q1, since then it’d be out before March, and is more likely to mean April-June, the first quarter of Sega Japan’s financial year.

Not too long, then! Six months, at the most (KNOCKONWOOD).

SEGA confirms Aliens: Colonial Marines still alive [videogamer]