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New Doom 3 For Xbox 360 And PlayStation 3 Supports Head-Mounted Displays 
Far Cry 3 And The Stranger In A Strange Land Representative Bobby Rush from Illinois thinks stereotypes are a serious problem in today’s media. To that effect, he’s chairing a special hearing entitled “From Imus to Industry: The Business of Stereotypes and Degrading Images” before the House Commerce Committee’s subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection next Tuesday, bringing together executives from all facets of the entertainment industry, including Strauss Zelnick, the chairman of Take Two Interactive. Zelnick will be joined by representatives from Warner Music, Viacom, Universal Music, Radio One, and quite possibly rapper Master P. Sounds like a party to me! The hearing will explore the way the media portrays people in general, possibly finally clearing up the popular misconception that prostitutes replenish your health. Lawmakers focus on media effects [The Hollywood Reporter via Game Politics]
Analysts love conference calls. It’s as if they are bears, and the money-talking words of a group of businesspersons at a long oak table are sweet, delicious honey. They also love predictions. I love this prediction. Ben Schachter, Evan Wilson and The Pachter all agree that Take-Two will be digging up two franchises in the next couple of years. One is Max Payne. The other is Red Dead Revolver. That would be great! I’m a man who loves his Leone westerns, and Red Dead was just one long slightly-interactive tip of the hat to those classics. A current-gen sequel, where the gameplay actually matches the mood and setting, would be a winner. Analysts’ double-take on Take-Two earnings [GameSpot]
2K Games and 2K Sports have a new little brother / sister to kick around as Take-Two announces the formation of 2K Play, a new publishing label dedicated to causal, family-friendly fare. To prove their family-fare-iness, they’ve also announced a partnership with Nickelodeon to develop games based off popular children’s properties. The first two games released under the 2K Play label will be Dora The Explorer and Go, Diego, Go! for the DS. “We welcome our new partnership with 2K Play,” said Shaul Olmert, Vice President/Digital Media products for Nickelodeon and MTVN Kids and Family Group. “This is the first time Go, Diego, Go! is coming to handheld and console systems and will mark Dora the Explorer’s debut on the popular Nintendo DSâ„¢ system. We are excited to welcome 2K Play into our growing family of innovative digital products.”
I’ve not seen GDG (hip appreviation for children’s program), but Dora seems like a natural fit for the DS. Finally we can poke that bastard Swiper right in the damn eye. Everybody chant “Backpack” to get to the press release!
There can be only one. Budget peripheral/accessory makers Mad Catz and Joytech, once bitter rivals, are now brothers, courtesy of Take-Two’s financial woes. Mad Catz have bought Joytech from former owners Take-Two lock, stock and barrel, taking possession of Joytech’s assets, staff and executive parking spaces. Take-Two’s Ben Feder: The sale of the Joytech assets is consistent with one of the key goals we established in our 100 Day Plan: to develop strategic alternatives for any operations that we determined to be outside our core publishing business.
Joytech employees in the UK and US should be safe, with “substantially all” of them to be kept in a job. Take-Two are happy, Mad Catz are happy, everybody gets a happy ending. Take-Two sells Joytech to Mad Catz [Gamesindustry.biz]
With some 1.5 million copies of BioShock shipped to retailers and Take-Two boasting the “All-Time Highest Xbox 360 Ranking on Metacritic” for the game, it would seem that a sequel is a lock. In today’s conference call discussing the company’s third quarter earnings, Take-Two chairman Strauss Zelnick said of the game’s success “Clearly, we have a new hit franchise on our hands.” Zelnick was pretty pleased with BioShock, 2K Games and his colleagues, telling the collected analysts that they’re “proving our ability to diversify Take-Two’s product portfolio.”
Zelnick dropped the F-word later when discussing the now-gen Grand Theft Auto development cycle. “BioShock is shaping up to be a very important franchise” said the chairman, underscoring the importance of the game to Take-Two. Zelnick added that he expects a “three year schedule” for the BioShock IP.
Set your clocks for 2010, kids. BioShock II will hopefully be just about wrapped up by then.
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.
Projectmanhunt.com is reporting that an early PS2 build of Manhunt 2 has leaked online. Though credited to Rockstar-unaffiliated Team Slonik, the software had to come from somewhere and YouTube clips are already appearing for public consumption—meaning this could become a quite literal torrent of bad press for Rockstar…who was finally (kinda) out of the fire for Hot Coffee.
Full release notes after the jump.
Take-Two today announced that they have sold “substantially all” of their Joytech video games accessories company to Mad Catz Interactive as part of a previously announced plan to ditch “non-core” businesses. “The sale of the Joytech assets is consistent with one of the key goals we established in our 100 Day Plan: to develop strategic alternatives for any operations that we determined to be outside our core publishing business,” said Ben Feder, Take-Two’s Chief Executive Officer.
Whenever things go bad in a legal/social sense, you can always count on the Dutch to pull one out of the fire. They’ve just announced that, should Take-Two wish to publish Manhunt 2 in The Netherlands, they can go right ahead and do it, since their classification laws are based on …the principle that every adult is considered capable of deciding for himself which games he wants to play, unless it contains illegal material.
In case you’re wondering, illegal material means either anything a paedophile would enjoy or any kind of racist propaganda. Manhunt’s got neither, so it’s all good! And that’s the completely uncut version, too, not the recently-edited US version. BONUS GOOD NEWS: should Take-Two wish to publish the uncut version in The Netherlands, it would most likely include the original PAL language tracks, in effect giving anyone throughout Europe and Australasia access to a legal, unedited copy of the game via importing. Dutch Won’t Ban Video Game Manhunt II [Forbes, via Gamesindustry]
It’s official, it was all a publicity stunt. OK, maybe not, but Take-Two just announced that after months of hand-wringing and “We don’t know if this game will ever see the light of day” the once AO-rated Manhunt 2 has dropped to an acceptable level of sex and violence and secured a Wal-Mart viable Mature rating for a Halloween release of the game.
While the press release on the jump is full of all sorts of jubilant quotes and drops phrases like “powerful piece of interactive story telling” and “extraordinary game”, I suspect this wasn’t much of a surprise to Take-Two and the Rockstar folks. Why else would they have continued to display the game and give press hands-on time with it if it wasn’t going to make the cut.
What I’d really love to know is what exactly they cut to make the rating drop. I suspect it will be one or two levels that were easy to dispose of for little or no expense.
