The publisher wouldn’t offer any new details on the Team Bondi game, which is not currently on Take-Two’s list of upcoming titles. That list extends well into mid-2010, so don’t expect to see anything material from L.A. Noire for a while. All Take-Two would say was that, yes, the game is still in development at Rockstar—they didn’t mention Team Bondi by name—and that they’d share more information when they had more information to share.

The last substantial development we heard on the multi-platform L.A. was that it was pushed into 2009, officially, then taken off the release list. In the meantime, Team Bondi has been staffing up, hopefully in an effort to give us an update and a final game.

L.A. Noire was first announced in the fall of 2006.

Remember L.A. Noire, the “interactive detective story” set in the late 1940s, set to be published by Rockstar Games? Apparently, so does the developer, Team Bondi, who are staffing up to maybe actually finish it.

The Sydney, Australia area dev — headed by Brendan McNamara, former Director of Development for Sony’s Team Soho Studio — has opened up the human resources floodgates, looking for animators, artists and programmers for L.A. Noire.

The game was announced in late 2006 and was most recently pegged for a 2009 release. L.A. Noire does not, however, appear on parent company Take-Two Interactive’s fiscal 2009 release list, which ends on October 31. Hey, it could still make the holidays!

Anyway, if you’re looking for a job where deadlines don’t seem that critical poke around the open positions.

Jobs [Team Bondi]

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

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]

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]

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]Rob:

It seems that Team Bondi has never heard of the concept of multiple discs.

Casey Toney:

GTAVI is having size problems, BLACKGUNNER. Why do you think it was delayed from fall of this year to first quarter next year? They couldn’t fit it on a disk. And that exclusive downloadable 360 content is stuff they couldn’t fit into the 360 version so they had to make it downloadable and Microsoft slapped down 50 mil to get that exclusive. They can use whatever bullshit they want now. Eventually, 360’s capabilities will be so far behind that developers won’t even be able to dream of making their game work on the 360. PS3 will start getting all the exclusives.

Brian:

Microsoft could have included HD DVD to the 360. But to do it would mean delaying the 360. They had to get all those awesome games to market fast. Games like Gears of War and Halo 3. Wait, those games weren’t release games? Oh, I guess Microsoft could have waited six months for HD DVD to come out afterall.

Razmossis:

xbox 360 is really like a ball and chain around the ps3s leg dragging it down, the games coming out for both means that the ps3 version is sooo under its potential just so the watery 360 can handle the pace, if that chain was broke then every game the came out for ps3 has the potential to sh1t on every 360 game!! LA NOIRE cant be put on 2 disks, its a free roaming game, youd have change disks every time ya wanted to go across the map… geyyyy!!! PS3 WILL WIN

Jose Cuervo:

RAZMOSSIS has the right idea, right now games are being made for both consoles because developers havent seen the true next gen potential in PS3. HD is going to be common just like SD has been for so long. No one will wanna play shitty 360 non-HD Halo 3 looking games…you’ll look back to Halo 3 and gears of war in less than a year and laugh when you see what the ps3 has in store. La Noire would fit on maybe 5 of your shitty 360 discs…and you’d have to change everytime you go from one side of the map to a territory on another disc. Games will be downgraded in order to port to 360 soon, live with it.
PS. When your warranty is up and your 360 dies, you’ll wish you’d have gotten a PS3…360 is terribly built, youll be lucky if it lasts you 3 years…PS3 was built to last over a decade.

Jacob33:

LA Noir sounds like the most boring game ever!
Did anyone play the awful ‘True Crime LA?’ – Half the problem with that was that real-life LA is a god-awful flat and tedius city to drive around. Have a look at some real maps if you don’t believe me.
Then take it to the 1940’s, where you’ll be driving chuggy antique cars with a top speed of 40mph around a bland undeveloped fraction of what LA is now. And of course there will be harldy any traffic either.

Then base it on ‘real’ crimes, which just sounds like an pointless anchor on the designers! If my nanna was still alive she might have cared, but can’t see anyone going ‘Ooo real 1940’s crime! – I’m getting it now!’
So with it all being real we can forget about any over-the-top hollywood style action entertainment sequences. I half expect there to be a bit where you spend hours doing paperwork.
Bake the above in a dreary desaturated film noir oven, and I think you’ve got the recipe for the most boring sounding game of all time.
I can almost hear the bland cheesy saxaphone as I spend forever driving slowly from point A to point B and back again.
Hey, but at least the characters will be wearing an authentic shade of brown. (A colour that really suits the game) Hopefully there will be a watching paint dry mini-game to help spice it up ;)
Not coming to 360? *wipes away a single tear* Awww, pity that ;)

XXCoop42XX:

first off, ps3 was delayed how many times… thats right 4 times.i wonder why? ohh wait i know first it was the video card overheating in just 2 hrs of play, then the hdd locked up(which xbox was the original hdd user,stolen idea by sony)then the whole dualshock crap then other little problems.the 360 is way more powerful than the gaystation3 and always will be and guess what microsoft doesnt have to make 5 different versions of a console to get it right.we have pro edition, core edition and the elite. sony has really killed itself with this paperweight3. many games wont port to ps3 because it cant proccess fast enough.so every one who was dumb enough to spend 500+ on a ps3 goodluck finding something to do, you guyz got nothin.(xb360 has xblive also,hmm ps network doesnt seem to have much goin on, i wonder who’s home).

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

What you missed:
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LA Noire Details Leaked?
40GB PS3 Dated
The Halo 3 Shwag Winner Is…
‘New Pack’ Wii SKU Coming?
Rockstar Appeals UK Rating Decision
New Soldier of Fortune Gorefest Looks Much Better

* 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!]

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.

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