Been all quiet on the LA Noire front for a while now. So how's everything going? Well according to the president of the Game Developers' Association of Australia (LA Noire's in development at Team Bondi studios in Sydney), Tom Crago, everything's going just fine. He says the game has around "a year or so to go", then adds that it "could be the biggest budget videogame in development anywhere in the world. It would certainly... in terms of console titles, be in the top ten... LA Noire is a massive massive project". Never really had the game pegged as a BLOCKBUSTER before, but hey, if that's how Rockstar want to spend their cash, it's their cash! Finally, he also told attendees at Games Convention Asia that the game was coming to 360. Funny, since it's always been a PS3 exclusive. Then again, Crago's boss of the GDAA, not boss of Team Bondi, so we'll peg this last bit a rumour for now.

L.A. Noire: A Year Off and No Longer PS3 Exclusive? [IGN]

Local dev portal Tsumea picked up on a July 23 article over at Playstation Lifestyle about the Sydney-based Team Bondi and LA Noire. The article references a post on TB's website, which states the studio is looking for animators to help finish production on the PS3-exclusive, noir-inspired title.

The thing is, the post in question is over two months' old. Anyway, that's not what caught my eye.

Have a read of the last comment by Aus artist for the PL story:

Team bondi lost all its lead programmers a few months ago and havent been able to fill the positions as far as i know. From what I have heard they are currently suffering from financial troubles. Previous emloyees [sic] have said it was a terrible place to work also.

Hardly conclusive, but I decided to pay a visit to Team Bondi's job page. Lo and behold, it's looking for no less than seven coders, and has been since April '08. It seems like an awful lot of programmers to be looking for during the arse-end of production. Whatever's going on, it does put an interesting spin on LA Noire's prolonged development.

L.A. Noire Almost Complete? [Playstation Lifestyle, via Tsumea]

Apparently, there's still a bit of confusion surrounding the "exclusivity" of Team Bondi's L.A. Noire, the 40's era detective thriller to be published under the Rockstar Games brand. We understand the confusion, to some degree, as the game in question was listed as being released only on the PlayStation 3 by Take-Two Interactive itself at one point. Then, just six-weeks later, the official PlayStation blog brought word of Team Bondi franchise exclusivity. In the blog's defense, it did write that L.A. Noire was not that franchise.

Still, when word popped up today that Bondi and company were looking for new hires, listing L.A. Noire for the Xbox 360 and PS3, we got tips. Tips we're quite grateful for, mind you. But given that Sony isn't shouting from the mountaintop, defending the honor of its console exclusive in this particular case, it's nothing to get worked up over. Team Bondi even lists "next generation consoles" as the platform, despite some claims that the game "definitely ain't coming to Xbox 360."

It's not coming out any time soon and we'll most likely have a clear console war champion by the time it does anyway. We'll have plenty of time to sort the whole thing out over the course of the year.

Team Bondi [Gamasutra Jobs]

Wow. We had a big response to our post containing leaked details on Team Bondi's LA Noire. The comments didn't just focus on the game however - you guys talked about everything from Blu-ray and HD-DVD to PS3 fan boys... with a bit of Brendan McNamara hate thrown in.

Would anyone at Team Bondi like to comment on the rumours? I get the feeling I'd be better off asking my toilet the same question...

Hit the jump for a raw comment extravaganza!

LA Noire Too Big For Xbox 360 [Kotaku Australia]

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To: Ash
From: Crecente
Re: WWWWW Is The New LOL

Gah, I hate the Ws, sorry. Of course, that doesn't mean you can't WWW to you heart's content. But I'm an OSL, I'll be LOL my way to the grave.

Part of me hates the W because it's something new and I've been lol-ing, far too much, since, well since forever. The idea of just arbitrarily stopping seems odd to me. It would be like someone walking up to me and saying, "Hey Brian, you're laugh is out-dated, you're going to have to start guffawing." Sorry, ain't gonna happen.

Also, there's the whole issue of the Ws feeling trite and fake. I mean, I understand where it comes from, and I can see you using it since you speak Japanese, but I don't and using the W seems to me like some sort of pretense, like I'm pretending I speak Japanese. Worse still, it feels like someone trying to be cool, like wwwww is some sort of in-the-know thing, something cliquish, and I hate cliques.

I realise that the lol is over used, that people have come to use as a shortcut for "Don't take this the wrong way" or "I'm just kidding" or "That was meant to be funny". That lol is essentially a social tick, a way of replacing facial expressions with three letters, but changing lol to wwwww won't fix that, just make it more annoying.

So go ahead and muck up our campfire with your Ws, but know every time you WWWWW, I'm crying on the inside...

lol

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Team Bondi must have at least a few people working in their Ultimo, Sydney office, according to a tip we received over the weekend pointing us to a blog with "exclusive" information on the title. From the post:

* The game will be a free-roaming title with a historically-accurate recreation of Los Angeles in 1947.
* Team Bondi has even hired a costume designer to research the clothing of the era so the game's attire can be accurate.
* Aside from main story, side missions will be based on actual cases pulled straight of the newspapers of 1947.
* A US Marine plays a big role in the story.
* Not so exclusive...but LA Noire definitely ain't coming to Xbox 360, the size of the game is an obstacle to this.

It's only a few tidbits, but it's more than we had before. Of note is that another developer is finding DVDs to be too small.

Exclusive: LA Noire information [Surfer Girl Reviews Star Wars, thanks Dallas!]

Tuesday last week, we caught wind of the news that Team Bondi's L.A. Noire, a gritty, detective-themed PS3 title, had been pushed back to 2009. Which is a while away.

It seems the developer, headed by Brendan McNamara of The Getaway fame, is now on the lookout for a truckload of coders. On September 14, they posted 10 such job openings on their website.

I asked the PR folks at Rockstar last week how things were going with Team Bondi and L.A. Noire, and the reply was a tentative okay. They weren't exactly eager to chat about the game; they made it clear there was nothing to say.

Well, if you think you can code, load your CV into a shotgun and fire the buckshot Team Bondi's way. The developer is based in Ultimo here in Sydney, so they should be local, or at least in the same state, for more than a few.

Team Bondi's PLAYSTATION 3 detective thriller L.A. Noire has been "moved out" of Take-Two's fiscal year 2008 release schedule, announced today during the company's financial conference call. L.A. Noire, which will fall under the Rockstar Games banner and touts former Team Soho developers—of The Getaway fame—, was first announced in the summer of 2005 for a release on the PS3, part of an agreement to develop multiple Sony-exclusive titles. Little has been shown of the game outside of a pair of trailers and it doesn't look like we'll see much more of it any time soon.

Take-Two also confirmed that the PSP rhythm game Beaterator has also slipped off the release radar, moving to at least 2009.