Oddworld Inhabitants Lorne Lanning thinks that Consoles are a big problem for games developers.

"Personally, I think the consoles are a problem", he told GamesDeveloper.bizGameDaily, "Years ago I was excited about consoles, but anything that makes development more expensive, rather than better, faster, cheaper, I think is a step backwards".

"I'm more excited about what I see happening on PC because I see it allowing for more smaller games to be sold that can be delivered to anyone who's connected at much lower price points".

I think what he is getting at is that you can just write a game for a PC and release it — you don't have to negotiate with LIVE or PSN, for example — and use the Internet to get the code out to whatever niche audience you like.

This may be the case, but if you are developing a big title (like, say, a new Oddworld game) surely the big money sink is in the creative side of the IP? All that artwork, music and writing — plus the code, of course. Is the open nature of the PC that much of a boon when you have multiple graohics cards to support?

'Consoles Are a Problem,' says Lorne Lanning [GameDaily]

Activision-Blizzard seems to have forgotten all about another Sierra game.

After throwing out 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand, The Bourne franchise and Brutal Legend, the company has seemingly let the sequel to Scarface: The World is Yours slip down the back of the development sofa as well.

It isn't a huge loss, it has to be said — there isn't exactly a shortage of a gangster-themed games around at the moment — but it still seems a shame that we haven't yet seen a version of Tony Montana on the latest console hardware. Chainsaws may be old hat, but I'll bet the PS3 could really render the living heck out of a line of blow.

There is still some hope — Ghostbusters managed to slime its way back in, after all.

Scarface 2... another Sierra game killed by Activision Blizzard [Variety's The Cut Scene]

And so the rumours of a possible Scout class upgrade coming up next dissolve in a hail of mini-gun bullets as the newly-created Official Team Fortress 2 Blog discusses upcoming changes to the Heavy, every Medic's best friend. In designer Robin Walker's highly informative post he explores the process behind updating a Team Fortress 2 class in great detail, starting with the overall goal of making the Heavy more viable as a standalone, non-Medicated class.

From there he explores the process of achieving that goal, including constraints (will the changes overpower the Heavy/Medic team?), entertainment value (will the new tools be interesting?), and weighing the changes against the basic skillset of a successful Heavy. It's an intriguing look into the process behind making Team Fortress 2 a better game, and a great read overall.

A Heavy Problem [TF2 Official Blog - Thanks Overcow!]

We mentioned the new Sony Playstation-edu initiative when it was announced; now, Senior Manager of Developer Support at SCEA Mark Danks explains a bit more about the program and it's goals (and the cost). If colleges and universities enter into this sort of relationship with Sony, they will have lovely legal language to follow, but can get access to PS2 and PSP dev kits for $AU 2,100 and $AU 1,055 a pop, respectively:

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Game developers and publishers should have no trouble at all creating realistic worlds and populating them with realistic people as NaturalMotion and NVIDIA announce a partnership that pairs the former's morpheme animation engine with the latter's PhysX technology in one powerful force of realistically moving goodness.

"We're deeply impressed by NVIDIA's commitment to push physics to new levels of fidelity and performance, and their investment in development and support infrastructure across all platforms," said Torsten Reil, CEO of NaturalMotion. "NVIDIA's PhysX technology provides a robust, high-fidelity foundation for our advanced character animation algorithms and tools. Through our close collaboration, we will help game developers bring fully interactive and believable characters to a wide range of games."

It's two great tastes that taste real together! Hit the jump for more details on the partnership between physics powerhouses.

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There's a cute feature up over at 1UP at the moment, where a bunch of noted developers have been given one wish. ONE ONLY (no secondsys). Or three, if they'd like, but not two. And those wishes can only be applied to some aspect of games development, not, you know. For their missus to get larger norgs, or to get a never-ending cookie jar or something. Warren Spector wants an engine that makes games as "easy" to make as movies. Will Wright wants better AI pathfinding. BioWare's Muzyka & Zeschuk want convincing, emotional AI. Some of the others are more interesting than that, others aren't, others cheated and are now trapped inside a brass lantern for a thousand generations.

Three Wishes [1UP]

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I've been giving the Wii a bit of a hard time lately as the new WiiWare games slowly eat away at my storage space, but of course this isn't anything a tiny SD card wouldn't take care of. How many WiiWare games can there be anyway? According to Nintendo of America's senior director of project development Tom Prata, more than a few, depending on your definition of a few.

Currently, there are about 100 games in development for WiiWare at various stages of completion.

The main saving grace here that will keep you from having to buy too many SD cards for backup storage, is that odds are not all of them will be worth purchasing. Of course without demos going up before hand we've no way of knowing for sure, but at least we'll have a revolver with a very large bullet capacity when we feel like playing a little WiiWare roulette. Hit up the IGN link below for a full interview with Prata.

Nintendo: 100 WiiWare Games in Queue [IGN Wii]

Ian Bogost is back with another Persuasive Games column, this time talking about the perception of the term 'casual' - we tend to think of casual as equaling informality (as opposed to 'formal' games for the hardcore market). It's the 'casual Friday' association, if you will - something that the current casual market encourages with the types of games being churned out. But what if we looked at the casual market in a racier light: instead of boring and staid, what about thinking of casual in a new way. Like ... casual sex?

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Juan Gril has what he terms a 'rallying cry' up on Gamasutra: the topic is innovation, specifically in relation to the casual games market (but I think this discussion applies on a much broader level to the industry as a whole, as evidenced by slews of blog posts and articles bitching about the topic). He draws a line between games that use incremental innovation - that would be the various incarnations of the match 3 formula, for instance - and games that have totally unique mechanics.

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We all know Japan hates the 360. We've all got our theories on why, too, but really, they're more like opinions. Few of you reading this are Japanese, even fewer of you make games specifically for the Japanese market. Which makes this GameSpot piece all the more interesting: they asked a whole bunch of Japanese devs just what they think is wrong with the 360.

Soul Calibur IV lead programmer Masaaki Hoshino

In order to succeed in Japan, [Microsoft] needs Japan-created content, not just a lot of foreign games that have been >> localised
Anonymous Ace Combat 6 developer

Japanese players don't want challenging, stressful, difficult games. Japanese players would rather have role-playing games with a slow tempo, where they are led and shown what to do. So, maybe games like Blue Dragon will start to change things. When more of those kind of games come on to the market, then I think more Japanese players will accept the 360.

Anonymous designer

People think [foreign games] are difficult and there's no guidance on how to clear the objectives. Now that has changed, and they are much easier to play, but this bias remains among Japanese gamers.

Infinite Undiscovery director Hiroshi Ogawa

I think in the previous generation that when it was the Xbox versus the PlayStation 2, Microsoft was unable to put out many RPGs. They weren't able to put out the type of games Japanese players really play. And the resistance to 360 may be some holdover from that.

My 2 cents follows: We heard Ryan Payton talking about how Metal Gear Solid 4, one of the biggest titles coming out of Japan, had been completely "westernised". And not just a regular old localisation, everything from its cameras to its controls had taken the Western market into consideration. How many Western titles return the favour?
Spot On: Japanese devs sound off on 360 [GameSpot]