Those rumours of layoffs at Australia’s largest development house are true. Krome Studios’ CEO Robert Walsh confirmed today that jobs have been cut at its Brisbane, Adelaide and Melbourne offices.
According to a report on Australian Gamer this afternoon, Krome Studios today laid off between 20 and 30 employees at its Brisbane studio.
We know that Blizzard just got named Develop magazine’s “most bankable” studio in its annual Top 100 list. But did any Australian studios make the cut?
Star Wars The Clone Wars: Republic Heroes is being developed by LucasArts and Krome Studios as a two-player coop action game.
You may have read a story on Monday about an aerial joy ride that went terribly wrong over Jumpinpin Bar, near North Stradbroke Island and South Stradbroke Island. It appears Ian Lovell, an artist for Krome Studios, was on the plane.
According to the story, the plane disappeared during an attempt to perform a massive loop. Search and rescue efforts found a propeller on August 31, but otherwise no wreckage has been found. Very sad news, and I can’t imagine how everyone over at Krome is feeling. All the best to the studio and Lovell’s family.
Entertainment Weekly got a chance to meet up with George Lucas, Dave Filoni and company to talk about the upcoming Clone War movie and video games.
The DS version is being developed by LucasArts Singapore and looks to be very touch-heavy, while the Wii version is being developed by Krome Studios in Australia. The LucasArts folks call Wii game the “ultimate light saber dueling experience”.
Check out the whole interview over at EW.
Read this: “The promise of a Wii Lightsabre game has hung in the air since the Wii hit the shelves. We think this is the game that delivers on that promise”. That’s Ken Fox, from Krome Studios, developers of the upcoming Clone Wars game for the Wii. Excited? Cool those jets. He also says this: “We’ve tried to make the lightsabre control as intuitive and fun as possible. It’s not a Lightsabre simulator, but when you swing your Wii remote left to right; your character does the same. You use the thumbstick on the nunchuck to move your character and swing the Wii remote to swing your Lightsabre”. Wait, that doesn’t deliver on the promise at all! Unless the promise was for yet another third-party action game based on a Star Wars story, only this time with waggle. Which it wasn’t! More info on the game below, which is a must-read if you want to see a man use the word “lightsabre” 20 times in a single interview.
Ah the Wiimote. An elegant weapon, not as clumsy or as random like a blaster. Paired with the Nunchuk, it’s pretty awesome too, according to this video from G4, which got an exclusive hands-on with Star Wars: The Force Unleashed for the Wii’s duel mode. (Man that was a mouthful).
G4′s reporter went as Luke Skywalker, duking it out in a TIE Fighter bay with Asajj Ventress There’s saber-slashing and Force-choking galore, all arising from a pretty shrewd use of combinations and reverse moves in both controllers. It’s not all lightning bolts and throws, either. Check out that old-school kick to the grill Luke delivers at the end.
