According to movie site Latino Review, Ward has been pulled off the flick. Sony and producer Avi Arad did not want to wait for Ward to contractually deliver drafts for other projects (like Hitman 2).

Instead, writing team Thomas Dean Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer, who penned the CONAN movie reboot, are being eyed as writers for the Uncharted flick. “At press time, negotiations are underway and it looks like a deal is imminent,” writes Latino Review. “Expect to hear it officially in the trades.”

News: Exclusive: Conan Writing Duo Chart Course For Drake’s Fortune! [Latino Review]

The Senior Vice President of Business Development at Sony Computer Entertainment says that as of last week, Uncharted 2 is now among the list of PlayStation 3 games to chart a course to a million. Rosenberg also lauded the game’s critical successes at today’s BMO Capital Markets Digital Entertainment Conference, but we’re betting the majority of those in attendance were far more interested in the game selling so darn well.

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves was released on October 15, giving it plenty of time for NPD to track its sales.

“There was a tester we had who came in and was constantly describing Drake as going into ‘beast mode,’” said Minkoff, a designer on Uncharted 2. “Like, ‘Man, I went into beast mode and merced those fools!’ And I said, ‘We need a beast mode medal.’ It had to happen.”

But what you do to get the “Beast Mode” medal is the larger part of why Minkoff talked with me earlier this week about designing for trophy support on the PS3. Beast Mode isn’t a difficult challenge, you just pet every yak you encounter in the Tibetan Village level, and the instructions for getting it are there in the game. But at this stage of the game, Naughty Dog wanted to encourage players to interact more with those they encounter, outside of doing so to advance the story.

It’s part of how developers are using things like trophies – which have been mandatory on all PlayStation 3 games for nearly a year now – and internally built medal systems to condition player behaviour, and steer them to aspects of gameplay that they might not seek out, whether from habit or not knowing it’s possible.

And, of course, it supports replay value. Which is why I was interested in Uncharted 2 as an example of developing for trophy support. Its strong, linear narrative forms the bulk of its experience, but that doesn’t exempt Naughty Dog from the obligation to invite gamers back for more after they finish the last chapter.

“I think the virtue of making a really good game with a story that really satisfies people, is that it’s not something people are going to put down and never pick back up,” Minkoff said. “We find that people who complete a normal playthrough, they go back and instantly start on hard. They look at the trophies. They look for more things to do in the game, and trophies help to add that value.”

Development for trophy support necessarily comes toward the end of a project, Minkoff said. The team doesn’t reinvent the wheel figuring out what to award – Uncharted 2’s trophy list mirrors in large part that of Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. But they do consider what their players will be looking forward to doing, and want to reward them when they pull it off.

“Being that Uncharted 2 is an action-adventure game, we wanted people to have an incentive to explore these worlds and see them from a different perspective, and use all the skills we’ve taught them,” Minkoff said. “Our combat related trophies are in there to help people learn advanced tactics. People might not know about Steel Fist [finishing off a foe with one punch] or shield takedowns until they go in and read the trophy list.”

The treasures and the kills, carried over in large part from Uncharted 1, condition a completionist mindset of seeing every inch of the world Naughty Dog created, and using all of the weapons placed in the game rather than relying solely on a trusted favourite.

Just as important is how difficult the trophies are to earn. “There were big arguments over here about how to handle that,” Minkoff said. “We don’t want somebody to come out of a game and feel like they accomplished nothing, and they only got two trophies because the others were so esoteric, weird or difficult to find. It’s like a slap in the face, to say, ‘You thought you played Uncharted, but you really haven’t.’ ”

The way Naughty Dog built their trophy structure “people should get about a third to a half of them on their first playthrough,” Minkoff said. “It’ll be on the lower end if they’re just rushing through and killing everyone, on the higher end if they’re finding, maybe, half the treasure and doing exploration.”

However, the studio has no way of knowing if its expectations are borne out by the statistics. Plenty of minute details and gamer behaviours are measured, but nothing comes back to Naughty Dog regarding trophy collection, Minkoff said.

“We track tons of stuff – where people die, how many weapons are used, what’s the most used weapon in a particular area, what’s the longest playthrough for a checkpoint,” Minkoff said. “But we don’t track trophies. [That analysis] is done by gut. We do tons and tons of playtesting, so we get a feeling for what players do, what they don’t do, what they like to do and what we should encourage them to do. But we develop that from playtesting.”

Sony Computer Entertainment caps the number of trophies and points a game can award. Increasingly, you’re seeing developers turn to internal reward systems to extend the payoffs to gamers; Naughty Dog is no different, engineering a medal system that’s familiar to what multiplayer fps gamers have seen elsewhere. Its intent is still the same as the trophies – get players to wring every last drop of value out of the game. Motivating the in-game medal system is the virtual money one earns, which can be redeemed for in-game unlockables.

It also allowed Naughty Dog to offer two types of rewards and make the game more accessible to gamers of varying levels of skill – or time to commit to it. “We didn’t wat people playing through the game and feeling there was no way to ever get the platinum trophy, that there was no way to get all the trophies because it was so super-complex,” Minkoff said. “We decided, if it’s core to gameplay, it gets a trophy. If it’s a skill-based honour, like a ‘Hey man, look what I can do,’ thing, then it’s a medal.”

Ultimately, it all presents a fuller picture of the gamer – not just for others, but also something he or she can reflect on, and remember the time spent in a rewarding game.

“One of the wonderful things it does is give you a constant reaffirmation that you’re doing the right thing and playing the game the right way,” Minkoff said. “There’s nothing like sneaking up, and taking down a guy, and getting that notice that you have the Master Ninja trophy. It means you have improved, you are continuing to master the game, and we are recognising that. It’s not just ‘Oh, here’s another guy to kill.’ It’s ‘Here’s a guy who matters in a larger context. And when I defeat him, that will be recognised.’ It’s a solid way of rewarding and reinforcing a game’s action.”

Because the Danish Trophy description has finally been fixed. Wait. I mean… Because this weekend, the Naughty Dog folks will be offering up twice the in-game cash in multiplayer games, also giving you a chance to shoot the team behind Uncharted 2 right in the virtual face, showing them how much you appreciate their hard work.

“Double Cash Weekend” runs from Friday, October 30, 2009 11:00 AM PST to Monday, November 2, 2009 11:00 AM PST.

It may also give you the opportunity to kill scores of T-800s whatever those glowing eyed, glowing hearted skeletal monstrosities that Naughty Dog is showing off in the teaser image offered alongside the update info at the PlayStation.blog.

UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves Celebrates Halloween with a Title Update and a Double Cash Weekend [PlayStation.blog]

But give the Major his due, the Xbox Live community guru Larry “Major Nelson” Hyrb has tweeted that he’s going to pick up Uncharted 2. If the context of this story escapes you and you also live under a rock, the game is a PlayStation 3 exclusive. And it speaks to the overall excellence of a game when your No. 1 competitor’s public face says he’s paying retail for it. Tweeteth the Major:

I’ll have to pick up UnCharted 2 this week. It’s being very well received. Congrats to @Naughty_Dog on a job well done!

Very nice gesture, but let’s not make a compliment of Microsoft into something greater than the credit Naughty Dog and Sony are due. Uncharted 2 is legitimately such a great game that it can be said everyone’s buying it.

Xbox’s Major Nelson To Buy PS3’s Uncharted 2 [Hot Blooded Gaming]

The two names that stuck out in the thanks list were Bungie and Infinity Ward.

Bungie stuck out because corporate structure has made it such that the company has traditionally only developed for the Xbox 360. Modern Warfare developer Infinity Ward makes multi-platform games, so it wasn’t such a big deal to see them — more like, oh hey, Infinity Ward!

Naughty Dog’s Neil Druckmann explains the end credit list in a live chat with fans: “We try to be quite open with our technology and our process. We exchanged technology and ideas with other developers. We wanted to make sure we thanked everyone that helped us out in some way.”

Naughty Dog? More like Really Generous And Good Dog.

Naughty Dog explains why they thanked Bungie and Infinity Ward. [Giant Bomb] [Pic]

We don’t have much info other than the transcript itself. Answering a reader’s question: “So what is next? DLC?” Druckmann said.

Well besides DLC – which you should hear more about pretty soon – we have an exclusive announcement! We’re releasing a prequel story to Uncharted 1 as a motion comic voiced by your favourite actors from the two games. Stay tuned for more into.

DLC, of course, is not a surprise. But this is the first we’ve heard of a prequel for the Uncharted continuity.

UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves Out Now! Live Chat with Naughty Dog Today at 2PM PT [PlayStation.blog thanks Andrew F.]

Naughty Dog multiplayer designer Justin Richmond spoke to Eurogamer at Sony’s London HQ recently, revealing that he’ll be working on downloadable content for the game for the foreseeable future, and while he’s “fascinated” by cooperative gameplay, time and size constraints will keep the focus on the competition.

“What you’ll probably see is more of the competitive type: more maps, more modes, stuff like that. The co-op stuff is hugely time-intensive and the size of it—the physical download size—is huge, so that’s probably not an option. I’m not going to say never, but for the foreseeable future we’re not going to be doing that.”

That doesn’t mean there won’t be more cooperative in the franchise’s future, however, with Richmond explaining that he’d be keen to explore playing together in future Naughty Dog titles.

“Naughty Dog does a really good job of defining things, and I think no one’s really done a definitively amazing amazing co-op experience and I think we can do that, and it’s something that at some point we’ll tackle,” he said. “If I have my say, then that’s what we’d do.”

I’m of the mind that co-op in Uncharted isn’t entirely necessary, and while it is a nice inclusion, the series wouldn’t suffer without it. Your thoughts?

Naughty Dog details Uncharted 2 DLC [Eurogamer]

Besides the standard t-shirt and neato bag, all those lucky enough to attend got a copy of the game — a week before the release! That’s way better than a stick in the eye. I hate it when I get a stick in the eye.

Uncharted 2 event – the spoils [Gameritis]

Nothing’s official by any means, but Naughty Dog’s Evan Wells says in an interview with website Examiner, “We’d love to see Uncharted grow beyond the PS3. It would be interesting to see what sort of changes to the design one would make for a portable system. But right now Naughty Dog is purely focused on PS3 development so we can’t promise anything from us in the near future.”

What Naughty Dog does promise is another Uncharted on this generation of home console PS3 hardware.

Naughty Dog talks Uncharted 2, Uncharted PSP, and Jak and Daxter PS3 in exclusive interview [Examiner Thanks, Lorand!]