Uncharted Not Done At 3

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Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception is the third game in the series and some people expect that it might end the franchise with a nice round trilogy. However, Naughty Dog is letting it be known now that they are not looking to put a bow on Uncharted just yet.

“You see it in the movies,” said Naughty Dog game director Justin Richmond to Edge. “They constantly reboot things you just saw ten years ago. You’re like: ‘Wait a minute. I just saw that!’ Spider-Man is just ridiculous. It’s something you have to be careful of with any kind of creative endeavor, and the lure to reinvent yourself is always there.

“But one good thing is that we feel we’re not done with Drake yet; we haven’t done all we wanted to do, and there are still technical hurdles and goals we want to get over, and do even more stuff in gameplay . . . We’re very cognizant of the legacy of what Drake is, and that every game should advance the story and the genre.”

Source: CVG

Xbox Live Going Beyond Good & Evil

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Microsoft announced at CES 2011 that they’re launching the Xbox Live Arcade House Party. What this will take the form of is five new downloadable releases for the Xbox 360.

Leading the House Party is Hard Corps Uprising (a new Contra game) on February 16. Beyond Good & Evil HD was also finally confirmed for the Xbox 360 and Touchlight will make its first appearance on consoles. Also coming are Bejeweled Blitz and the Windows Phone 7 crossover Full House Poker.

Scion Famicom Rolls Out

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The Famicom Scion xB was revealed last year and here’s a video to prove it’s more than just some concept drawings. Check out all the features, including the rear and front projectors, noise-making car doors and NES cart key.

Fight Night Champion: How Everything Was Lost

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There are several twists and turns with the plot in Fight Night Champion, including the lowest low of being sent to prison. Lots of effort is clearly being put into making the story more immersive.

Amazon Launches Appstore For Android

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Amazon announced that they have launched an application store for Android. They plan on having the store be more comparatively open than Apple’s iTunes store, but copyright-violating and pornographic apps will still be barred.

They say that prices will be dictated by the retailer themselves, although the app maker can set a list price. This offering from Amazon is expected to be a rival to Google’s existing Android Market.

Source: Tech Crunch

Dead Space Tears Into IOS

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EA has revealed that Dead Space will be coming to iOS. The game will be set between the events of Dead Space and the upcoming sequel, with a man named Vandal fighting necromorphs on the moon of Titan.

The iPad version is looking sharp.

The game will not be an action/comic or a rail-shooter — rather, EA indicates it is a third-person shooter. It will release on iPad in January 2011.

Source: IGN

Dance Central Comes To Dancing Show

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Sky TV and Microsoft have announced a sponsorship campaign for Sky 1 s show Got to Dance. All of the live shows of the program will integrate the Dance Central Kinect title, giving audience members a chance to try out the game and viewers a chance to win Kinect prizes.

As we move beyond our biggest entertainment launch in Xbox’s history, Kinect for Xbox 360, we are constantly looking out for compelling opportunities to bring our gaming experiences to life, said Stephen McGill, Director, Microsoft, Entertainment and Devices Division, UK & Ireland. Sky 1’s Got to Dance show  is the perfect partner for our smash hit title Dance Central a true dance game experience that is fun and social for everyone. We are really excited to be developing this association with them in the coming months and look forward to future opportunities.

Got to Dance was a huge success early last year and series 2 will be even bigger, bolder and better, said Stephen Ladlow, Sponsorship Controller at Sky. We are delighted to have secured a partnership with Dance Central as it provides a seamless fit between brand and content.

Dance Central is the perfect partner for Got to Dance , with the show being a great platform to engage our target audience, commented Rory Behrman, Ideation Director at UM London. Promising to be a huge success we are delighted to be partnering with the show.

The first show with the integration aired on Sky 1 on January 3, 2010.

Mass Effect Evolves Another Comic

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BioWare has announced that they are teaming up with Dark Horse Comics to create another 4-issue comic book mini-series. Called Mass Effect Evolution, the story will give more details for the enigmatic Mass Effect 2 character, The Illusive Man and the role he played in humanity’s first war against the alien Turian attack.

The story will officially be part of the Mass Effect canon and will feature writing by Mass Effect 2 & 3 Lead Writer Mac Walters, with co-writing handled by John Jackson Miller and art by Omar Francia. Covers will both be provided by Massimo Carnivale and Joe Quinones.

Cover of issue #1.

Mass Effect Evolution will be available at retail from bookstores and also online through the Dark Horse Digital Comics program or the Dark Horse brand bookshelf app on iTunes.

Source: BioWare Blog

Uncharted 3 About Going Beyond What Was Done Before

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Uncharted 2: Among Thieves was an impressive game graphically from a technical level. According to developer Naughty Dog, the game was so bleeding edge it nearly didn’t all fit in the PS3.

“If anyone on the team makes a face like, ‘Oh, we’re f*cked’, then we know we’re good,” said Naughty Dog co-president Christophe Balestra to Edge. “We have to be uncomfortable. Three weeks before shipping Uncharted 2, we couldn’t even fit the game in memory. The day we have no solution to that, that’s going to be a real problem.”

“We shoot for the moon, which is what the artists want to see,” added Balestra. “We’re driven by artists, and it’s the job of the programmers to make it fit, in terms of memory and frame-rate. The artists will always go beyond what we have at our disposal, and [newly previewed U3 level] Chteau is a perfect example.”

They’re not resting on their laurels either, saying that they’re looking to optimize the Cell processor’s SPUs as much as is humanly possible. “We’re at full speed, optimizing code specifically for the SPUs,” explained Balestra. “It’s a great resource because [SPUs] are extremely fast, and if you optimize they get faster than you ever thought they could be. That’s where the quality of our images comes from.”

Source: CVG