Sony Sells Tokyo Office

Sony Corporation today announced the sale of its Sony City Osaki office building for 111.1 billion yen ($1.2 billion/ £790.9 million). The building was sold to Nippon building Fund, Inc. and one unnamed Japanese investor, but Sony will remain in the building for five years under a new lease agreement.

Net cash after transaction costs comes to 110 billion yen ($1.19 billion/ £783 million), with Sony expecting a gain on 41 billion yen ($442.4 million/ £291.9 million) to go against operating income for the fourth quarter of the fiscal year ending on March 31, 2013.

The sale comes as Sony tries to slim down and cut costs.

“Sony has identified certain assets for possible sale as part of an initiative to transform its business portfolio and reorganize its assets. This sale was conducted as a part of that initiative. While this sale was anticipated and the potential gain on the sale was taken into account at the time of the forecast, Sony is currently reevaluating the aggregate impact of this sale and other factors on the forecast,” said the company in its statement.

Courtesy: Sony.net

Sony Sells Tokyo Office

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Destiny: A Shared World Shooter

Bungie has begun unveiling Destiny, the grand game project that’s been in the works for years. The future for Bungie, and a significant part of Activision’s future, is depending on the success of this game. Bungie and Activision brought members of the press to Seattle to start revealing information about the game and to create some excitement and anticipation for Destiny. The process also raised many questions that have yet to be answered.

A full day of meetings were held for the assembled press, beginning in mid-morning and lasting until mid-afternoon. After a tour of Bungie’s studio, Bungie COO Pete Parsons and several key Bungie employees discussed major aspects of Destiny. Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg joined them for a question-and-answer session. The most curious feature of this entire day was that no actual gameplay was shown; the closest we came was a few seconds of in-engine footage to demonstrate a feature of the new graphics engine.

What is Destiny? The next game from Bungie is “ambitious in its scope, innovative and creative in its approach, elevated in its tone, and is the kind of ass-kicking trek through the universe that only Bungie could create,” said Hirshberg. “Very few games transcend their medium and their genre to truly become part of popular culture. We believe that Destiny could become one of those rare games.”

“[This] is the kind of ass-kicking trek through the universe that only Bungie could create” – Eric Hirshberg

Destiny’s more than just Halo on steroids, though. “As we saw Destiny coming together, we realized that it didn’t belong to a genre that we could quite pin down,” Hirshberg said. “It has elements of a first-person shooter, it has elements of an open-world sandbox, and it has elements of a persistent world, and brings them all together in a new way that seems very fresh. We realized that to refer to Destiny as any one of these pre-existing genres is almost to under-promise or undersell the experience we think it could bring to gamers. We realized that we needed to coin a new phrase and a new way to reference what this game is. I think what Bungie is creating with Destiny is the world’s first shared world shooter.”

The game takes place in the future, on Earth and throughout the Solar System, in a style art director Christopher Barrett calls ‘mythic science fiction.’ Players will take on the role of a Guardian of Earth’s last city, fighting against a variety of aliens amid the shattered remnants of an interplanetary empire. The settings revealed through concept art appear vast and awe-inspiring, evoking a sense of wonder and a desire to explore. Barrett noted that they have generated more concept art for this game than for all previous Bungie games put together.

Bungie co-founder and project director Jason Jones said that “we’re doing something really ambitious, and I hope by the end you’ll agree it’s a little crazy.” Jones started off with a simple declaration: “If you enjoy first-person shooters, Destiny’s going to be the best first-person shooter you’ve ever played.” Bungie is looking to create a much broader appeal, though, by including many more (unspecified) elements to the game that will have a broad appeal. Destiny will (somehow) let players of all skill levels have fun, so you won’t need to be an FPS expert to jump in and have a good time. From all the deliberately vague descriptions of the gameplay, it seems like Bungie wants Destiny to appeal to a much broader audience than just Halo or Call of Duty players. “Absolutely,” Bungie’s Parsons agreed. He’s a fan of World of Warcraft, and Skyrim, and other games, and he hopes that the range of experiences in Destiny will bring in many gamers who are not classic FPS players.

Bungie has had Destiny under development for several years, and in the process has thoroughly re-imagined and re-invented their ideas of what a game could be and should be, along with the technology necessary to make that happen. Jones noted that Destiny’s design is built on seven pillars: A world players want to be in; a bunch of fun things to do; rewards players care about; a new experience every night; shared with other people; enjoyable by all skill levels; and enjoyable by the tired, impatient, and distracted.

“We’re doing something really ambitious, and I hope by the end you’ll agree it’s a little crazy” – Jason Jones

Writer and design director Joe Staten said that ‘we’re all storytellers’ and that Destiny was designed to bring that out in the players. Their vision is to tell stories that matter and endure, and the most important stories will be the ones told by players. This is a big change from the design concept of the Halo series, which was built around the story of Master Chief and not really around the player’s character.

Engineering lead Chris Butcher discussed the ambitious scale of the game, which has required a huge amount of new technology. Bungie has spent the last six years rebuilding game technology, including such things as a multithreaded engine, a new graphics engine, an interactive world editor, distributed computing clusters, advanced AI and locomotion, a live update content pipeline, and global scale servers. Interestingly, the concept of a matchmaking lobby is disappearing into the background, as Bungie has created what it calls ‘seamless, invisible technology’ that is continuously matchmaking, transparent to the user; there’s no UI.

Graphics architect Hao Chen described how Bungie had to build a new graphics engine because the world is so big; it had to be automated. The old way of lighting, Chen explained, required pre-rendering, which took enormous amounts of time and resource. Now it’s all real-time, which enables things like a dynamic time of day. The result is some interesting emergent graphics that occur, surprising even Chen with how they look.

The music for Destiny is still under development, but audio director and composer Marty O’Donnell described how he wanted Destiny music to go to ‘the next level,’ to really enhance and reflect emotions. O’Donnell worked with long-time collaborator Mike Salvatore and a surprise contributor – none other than Paul McCartney. It turned out McCartney has been very interested in interactive music and heard about Bungie’s project, and the result has been a world-class collaboration. O’Donnell played segments that were recorded with a 106-piece orchestra and chorale at the iconic Abbey Road studio. The classical score brought to mind some of the great movie composers, like John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, and Bernard Herrmann.

Parsons, Hirshberg, and Bungie president Harold Ryan then answered questions from the assembled press, but revealed few details of Destiny. There will be an Internet connection required, even to play solo, which could rub a few gamers the wrong way. There was no detail on release dates or pricing, but Hirshberg did say that the game is currently targeted at Xbox 360 and PS3; next-gen consoles were not a topic he could talk about. There will also be a mobile app that will have a significant impact on the game, the team said. Parsons emphasized that Bungie has a lot of great ideas and is not playing it safe.

Hirshberg did address one of the questions head-on, before it was even asked. “I’ve heard all the rumors, and let me just rip this bandaid off right here,” Hirshberg said. “We have absolutely no plans to charge a subscription fee for Destiny.”

“Let me just rip this bandaid off right here: We have absolutely no plans to charge a subscription fee for Destiny” – Eric Hirshberg

Destiny represents a grand re-imagining of the first-person shooter, expanded and modified so that it may appeal to a broader audience. Bungie’s commitment is enormous; the entire staff of 360 is working on this game. Activision is also heavily committed, on a scale of hundreds of millions of dollars. More than that, Activision has (by their own count) four major brands, and if they want to grow substantially they need more such brands, “Activision’s approach has been to try to do a few things exceptionally well,” said Hirshberg. The dark side of that strategy is that when you don’t do something exceptionally well, it can be devastating.

Activision has done its best to minimize the risks. It’s chosen one of the best developers in the world with a stellar track record to head up the project, and given the team plenty of time and resources. Bungie has thrown itself headlong into the project, setting forth ambitious goals and leaving no assumption unexamined. Bungie’s staff also noted that they are currently playing Destiny in-house and bringing in outside testers to give them feedback, which implies that the game is pretty far along and Bungie is well aware of the need for polishing the game. Many great game concepts have failed in the marketplace because of unbalanced play, numerous bugs, or just a lack of fun. Bungie knows very well indeed that a high level of polish is crucial to the game’s success.

Perhaps the most common failure point for a big budget game is when a publisher pushes to ship the game by a certain date. That’s when polish gets forgotten, important features are removed, and the brilliant design can become an unplayable mess. Activision seems to be avoiding this trap; in the company’s forecast for 2013 it carefully noted that it did not include revenue from Bungie’s project. At the same time, Bungie seems to be pretty far along with the game; the studio may well be able to ship it this year. If so, Activision gets a pleasant surprise boost to its revenue. If not, well, management can say “We told you not to expect it this year.”

The biggest challenge to the ultimate success of Destiny may be something beyond the control of Bungie or Activision: the future of the console market. Will current-gen consoles continue to decline in sales, or will there be price cuts that may keep sales going? When next-gen consoles arrive, will they sell at the levels seen for the current generation, or will they struggle? Could Destiny be a game like Halo that can actually drive hardware sales and the overall market?

Some clues to Activision’s thinking can be found in its contract with Bungie. The text of the Activision/Bungie contract was revealed in the course of Activision’s lawsuit with Infinity Ward last year. The agreement (dated April 2010 – it may have been altered since then) spans a period of ten years, in which Bungie will develop content that Activision will publish. The first release was slated for the Fall of 2013 with major releases at every two years afterwards, and major DLC releases in the years between. The target platforms for the initial release are specified as Xbox 360 and its successor (labeled in the contract as “Xbox 720″), with a PS3 release for Fall 2014. A second Destiny Game would also be released on the “PS4″ (the successor to the PS3) and the PC (under Windows).

“Activision’s approach has been to try to do a few things exceptionally well” – Eric Hirshberg

We’re likely to see the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions appear in relatively close order; this doesn’t appear to be a problem these days for most developers. Should next-gen consoles launch this year, would Destiny be a release title? While nothing was said about this by either Bungie or Activision, it should be obvious that releasing Destiny as a launch title for a next-gen system would be a sure sales boost. If it can be done, it will be done. If the contract is still unchanged, don’t expect Destiny to be exclusive to any platform. It’s also interesting to note that a PC version is planned; that makes a lot of sense as yet another platform that should be good for a considerable audience. Everything we know about next-gen consoles indicates it will be far easier to port those titles to and from the PC.

The Destiny press reveal was fascinating for a number of reasons. No gameplay was shown, and no ship date was given. Even if the game ships this fall, this is extremely early to be giving press conferences for a fall game. There are no press conferences planned any time soon for Call of Duty’s fall release, or Grand Theft Auto V, or the next Madden or FIFA. Normally you wait until E3 to start the real buzz going on fall releases. Perhaps Activision merely wants to get out in front of the huge noise level that’s going to be overwhelming the game market this year. New consoles, new mobile platforms, important new software releases – game media this year will be filled with sound and fury from every PR direction.

For now, we have to wait until Activision and Bungie decide to reveal more. When we can finally get our hands on the game, we’ll be better able to see how Destiny might unfold. Check out the video below for more.

Destiny: A Shared World Shooter

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Escape From The Monastery

Good old Crystal Dynamics has unearthed a rather long game play footage taking us through the trials and tribulations of young Lara Croft utilizing cover while being shot at and the tired old QTE sequence.

The game in its entirety is expected to be on sale on 5th March for the PC, PS3 and the Xbox 360.

Escape From The Monastery

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Would Sony Know How To Market The PS4?

One way or another, February 20th will be remembered as an important day in the legacy of the PlayStation brand. As we have been oft-reminded by every single news writer in the industry for the last few weeks, this is the day that Sony will presumably unveil the PlayStation 4, the culmination of years of work and the earnest beginning of the next generation of consoles. For all of you about to dive into the comments section with some variation on the old “BUT WHAT ABOUT THE WII U” protest, don’t bother. We’re not having this conversation right now.

There is, of course, the smallest of small chances that the upcoming press event isn’t about Sony’s next console, but that in and of itself would be memorable, if only for the sheer volume of crestfallen faces we’ll see immediately afterward. To not unveil the PS4 now would be tantamount to Sony admitting it is nowhere near ready to show what it has, and by all accounts, that doesn’t seem likely. So having acknowledged such a slim-to-nil possibility, let’s now move on and talk about what we’re likely going to see.

We don’t write console rumors as proper news stories around here, usually for a variety of reasons. For one, even in the most seemingly accurate circumstances, the rumors are often based on spec or development hardware, which is often being revised as development goes along. Two, save for those rarified situations where people seemingly have good, solid intel, most other console rumors are Grade A horseshit.

All of that said, we’re close enough now to the probable announcement that the stockpile of recent rumors probably at least holds something close to the truth. Here’s a quick once over of what we sort of maybe possibly almost know so far.

It will likely be quite powerful, though that won’t necessarily be the focus. Multiple rumors have placed the system’s processor (at least at the current devkit level) as being a 4x Dual-Core AMD64 “Bulldozer,” with an AMD R10xx GPU, 8GB of system memory, and 2.2 gigs of video memory. Technical specs give me migraines, so you’ll forgive me if I don’t spend more time trying to break down what all of that means. Suffice it to say, it will have some horsepower. However, as we saw with the PlayStation 3, sheer horsepower does not a successful console make. The PS3 has never captured the level of worldwide ubiquity achieved by its two predecessors, partially due to a mixture of cost, various examples of shoddy or lackluster marketing, and strong competition from Microsoft (and, for a time, Nintendo). So with the PS4, there’s going to have to be something else, some other key factor that can bring wayward players into the fold. Such as…

A controller that features a touch-pad, more flexible user account signing, new media device connection capabilities, and a partridge in a pear tree. Of all the crazy hardware rumors out there, this is the least crazy-sounding thing I’ve heard. A PlayStation controller with touch-pad functionality just makes a hell of a lot of sense. The Vita may have, in some respects, simply been a test-marketing campaign for people’s interest in such tech. Keep in mind that nobody’s saying the PS4 will have a straight-up front touch screen, but more likely something akin to the Vita’s rear touch pad. Again, this is all speculative, but it all seems likely. Elsewhere, we have what will likely be a new system for allowing multiple users to sign into accounts, and a bit of bandying over the idea that the PS4 will connect to a variety of handheld devices, making the system more of a definitive living room “media hub.”

All of that sounds really great, except for one key detail…

It’s probably going to be fairly expensive. No, not $600 expensive, but probably north of the $400 range, at least in Japan. Yen-to-dollar transitions in price are rarely 1-to-1, but $399 for a new base-model console from Sony doesn’t sound outrageous. Pricey, but not completely insane. Of course, there’s still plenty of room for them to jack up that price for more premium models.

There are other ideas being kicked around as well, but these are the most persistent, most constant of rumors, the ones that seem most likely to come to fruition in some capacity. I won’t presume to say without having even seen the console whether it has any chance of success, but based on what tentative info I’ve read thus far, I think the hardware sounds like it could be very cool.

But is that going to be enough for Sony? Probably not. After all, the Vita, which is also unquestionably a very cool piece of hardware, has not made much impact at retail since it launched in the US last year. So much of that can be easily attributed to a lack of proper marketing for the device, not to mention a dearth (but not total lack) of quality games for the system. There are good games for the Vita, but none of them have been pushed the way, say, a Call of Duty Black Ops: Declassified has been. In fact, apart from that wretched game, I can’t remember the last time I saw an ad for anything related to the Vita anywhere.

This is what worries me most about the PlayStation 4. Not the specs, not the price, not even the games, necessarily. I’m just not convinced Sony has its shit together enough to promote this thing properly.

Actually, to digress for a second, I am a tad worried about the games as well. It’s not that I don’t trust such Sony luminaries as Naughty Dog, Guerrilla, and Santa Monica studio to offer up entertaining, blockbuster experiences that will almost assuredly be ready for the system’s launch window. And I expect there will be several games from smaller indie devs as well–after all, for all of Sony’s missteps during this generation, one of its greatest strengths has been its courting of interesting independent games for the PlayStation Network store.

But beyond those big names and a few small studios that have thoroughly bought into Sony’s plans, I don’t really know what else the console maker has to work with these days. The last couple of years has seen Sony shutter or cut ties with numerous studios. Internally, S.O.C.O.M. developers Zipper Interactive, Pursuit Force and Little Deviants dev BigBig Studios, and WipeOut franchise runners Sony Liverpool have been closed. Then there are the third-party devs, like Eat Sleep Play (Twisted Metal), Sanzaru (Sly Collection, Sly 4), The Workshop (Sorcery), Lightbox (Starhawk) and SuperBot Entertainment (PlayStation All-Stars: Battle Royale). Each of those studios has produced (or was at least in the process of producing) a major game for Sony, and in each case, said game was sent off to retail without much marketing behind it. And in several of those cases, Sony has cut ties with the studios following those games’ underperforming at retail.

That’s about as hostile a potential working relationship for any developer as I can picture. Sure, publishers close or cancel contracts with developers all the time, but Sony has practically made it habitual. In some cases, like Twisted Metal and Sorcery, it’s likely that Sony simply didn’t have a lot of confidence in those games. But titles like Battle Royale, Starhawk, and Sly 4 have never seen a great deal of negative press, nor was there anything to suggest that Sony had misgivings about their development. Hell, PlayStation All-Stars was practically Sony’s only major holiday release last year. Yet, like so many other recent Sony-published games, it was shuffled off to retail with no fan fare, no significant marketing campaign, and no indication that anyone at Sony even really cared all that much.

Then again, it’d be hard to share such feelings given that much of Sony’s PR team was gutted before the holiday season even began.

Following every major sports season, you can always tell which teams are about to begin a “rebuilding phase” by how fast and furious the firings come. Older players with expensive contracts are often jettisoned as the team begins gathering funds and resources to try and rebuild itself through the draft and farm talent. I mention this because it feels for like the last year or so, Sony’s been jettisoning expenses in preparation of what’s to come with the PlayStation 4. Except that instead of just letting old contracts expire and cutting a few chunks of fat at the tail end of the cycle, it’s been passively letting every major PlayStation 3 and/or Vita game of the last year wander onto the field and get beaten half to death without providing any notable support whatsoever. Games like Journey have certainly managed to gain attention, but only through rabid support by the press and extremely positive word-of-mouth from fans. From a marketing standpoint, Journey’s success was practically a work of divine intervention.

There are only two ways to view this. Either Sony is hoarding money and resources for a massive, blitzkrieg marketing assault starting around E3 and culminating with the system’s launch (maybe) this holiday, or Sony has completely lost any sense of direction, drive, or enthusiasm for its own game division, and simply doesn’t have the confidence necessary to push a new console into the marketplace with the proper support it requires.

Truthfully, I believe the former far more than I would believe the latter. This has been a supremely weird closeout to the PlayStation 3 era, and the Vita’s unceremonious dumping at retail certainly hasn’t given anyone the impression Sony really cares all that much these days about its own welfare in the marketplace. But a new console generation is something different. This is Sony’s potential opportunity to wipe the slate clean and go balls-out crazy on the next Xbox. This is their chance to make a wholly compelling argument for why people should make Sony’s all-purpose gaming and media box the logical and exciting choice. That’s incredibly important, because if any of the more interesting Durango rumors hold true, they’ll have to be extremely convincing to drive market share away from Microsoft. Changing perceptions can be an enormously difficult thing, but when everybody’s got a new machine to shill, all bets are off.

Especially in a generation that some industry prognosticators are deeming the last of the home console dinosaurs. I don’t necessarily believe that, but I wouldn’t outright dismiss such a claim, either. So many things could go so very, very wrong this gen that in a worst-case scenario, I could easily see this being the last time we, as an industry, collectively go crazy over a slate of shiny new boxes to play with.

You hear that, Sony? This is quite possibly your last legitimate chance to impress the world with your home hardware, and take back the crown of the most played console brand of the market. In the parlance of one of my favorite shows on television, RuPaul’s Drag Race, Microsoft and Sony are about to lip sync for their lives, and right now, we don’t even know if Sony has bothered to memorize the words.

I guess all that’s left to say to Sony at this point is good luck. Oh, and don’t fuck it up.

source: Giant Bomb

Would Sony Know How To Market The PS4?

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Remnants Of Big Huge Games Dissolved

Posted on 1:15 AM by Unknown

Epic Games has closed Impossible Studios, the studio founded by former members of 38 Studios subsidiary Big Huge Games. The studio was founded when 38 Studios shuttered both of its development houses in May of 2012. Impossible Studios was put to work on Infinity Blade: Dungeons, an expanded iOS dungeon crawler based in the Infinity Blade universe.

“We’re closing Impossible Studios,” said Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney in a message today. “When former members of Big Huge Games approached Epic last year, we saw the opportunity to help a great group of people while putting them to work on a project that needed a team. It was a bold initiative and the Impossible folks made a gallant effort, but ultimately it wasn’t working out for Epic.”

“In addition to providing Impossible Studios employees with 3 months of severance pay, we’ll be giving the team the opportunity to form a new company with the Impossible Studios name and the awesome Impossibear logo,” Sweeney added. “This means that Infinity Blade: Dungeons is now on hold as we figure out the future of the project.”

Despite being shown in demo at the press event for the third-generation iPad in March of 2012, Infinity Blade: Dungeons was a no-show for the rest of the year.

Remnants Of Big Huge Games Dissolved

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New Call of Duty Confirmed

Activision today confirmed a new Call of Duty game will launch in 2013. The news was revealed during a post-earnings financial call, where Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg also revealed the new entry in the franchise is not expected to perform as well as the record-breaking Call of Duty: Black Ops II.

“The Call of Duty franchise continues to set the bar for innovation and we expect the new Call of Duty game in development for 2013 to raise that bar even higher,” Hirshberg said.

“There is increased volatility this year due to the ongoing console transition, which makes predicting the future more challenging than during normal years in the cycle. For Call of Duty, consistent with our past practices, we are planning for the mainline release in Q4 to be down versus 2012,” Activision CFO Dennis Durkin added.

This unnamed game is expected to launch in Activision’s fourth quarter, which runs October-December. New consoles from Microsoft and Sony are rumored to launch around the same time. Next-generation Call of Duty games are believed to be in development.

According to the latest rumor, this year’s Call of Duty game will be Modern Warfare 4. No developer for the project has been named, though Treyarch can likely be ruled out, as that studio shipped Black Ops II just three months ago.

Activision currently has five studios working on Call of Duty games: Infinity Ward, Treyarch, Raven Software, Sledgehammer Games, and Neversoft Entertainment.

New Call of Duty Confirmed

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10 Game Franchises That Could Use A Reboot

Ninja Theory’s DmC was released not too long ago, and surprise, surprise, gamers are still complaining about the series’ reboot just as much as they were back in 2009 when it was first announced. From gripes about Dante’s attitude being too different to the game’s easy-peasy difficulty, their grievances have been made loud and clear. But developers shouldn’t let such a backlash to what actually turned out to be a pretty swell game completely turn them off from the idea of reboots—sometimes you really just have to hit reset. And that’s especially true for the following gaming franchises.

10) Resident Evil: Before DmC was released, the newest installment of Resident Evil was a game many were getting into slap-flights over. Resident Evil 6 introduced the series to simultaneous moving-and-shooting, a mechanic that went did go well with all the Michael Bay-esque set pieces. While many would agree that the series just isn’t what it used to be, for many RE6 was too much of an action-game—instead of returning the series to its survival horror roots, Capcom simply stayed the RE5 course and created yet another third-person shooter. There is no denying that the series could benefit from a reboot. Instead of following its humble origins from a single mansion in 1996, newcomers are often left scratching their heads over what’s going on as the bio-weapon epidemic has complete global saturation. And considering how the series’ core cast of Chris, Jill, and Leon are always popping up while secondary characters are tossed aside and forgotten, it’s time the series take good hard look at itself and start over. Go back to Raccoon City and start from there.

9) Final Fantasy: While essentially caught in a constant state of reboot, the franchise’s inability to produce quality titles can no longer be ignored. Many would agree that the beginning of the end came post-Playstation 2, where reception of Lightning and gang was less than what Square Enix may have hoped—i.e. it was garbage with its auto-battle system and an essentially town-less experience. It didn’t get better when the equally bad FFXIII was churned out last year, either. But nothing prepared the world for the disaster that was Final Fantasy XIV. With complex unexplained mechanics, daily experience caps (seriously?), copy-pasted areas and a lag-ridden hidden UI, the online FF was so badly rejected by the gaming community that it has since prompted Square Enix to officially apologize and try again. Maybe that’s not all that should be apologized for, and maybe, just maybe, it isn’t the only part of the franchise that needs to be completely retooled.

8) Mana Series: In an age when online multiplayer is becoming a bigger and bigger of the industry, it’s a shame that this cooperative action-RPG series hasn’t made a single move on the market. Lately, the franchise has take the RTS route on the 3DS…which is nice, but leaves so much to be desired. What Mana needs is a full-fledged action-RPG in the vein Kingdom Hearts with online co-op capability, allowing players to jump right in at any given moment. Come on Square Enix, I know you got the resources to create the game Mana fans have been longing for. Isn’t it about time that we go back to potatos!?

7) Onimusha: Modern gaming has had a dearth of sweet sword-slicing action. While Metal Gear Rising might satisfy the itch that can only be soothed by katana, dismembering robot dogs with a High-Frequency Blade isn’t quite as timeless a charm as banishing ancient Japanese demons with a magical sword. Considering DmC‘s recent release and the likes of Metal Gear Rising and Killer is Dead on the horizon, 2013 is going to be ripe with slash-tastic titles, so why not throw this franchise back into the mix? Come on Capcom, I know you a reserve of Genma Souls laying around; use’em or lose’em.

6) Shenmue: Shenmue loyalists have been looking for info on a new entry to the Dreamcast series for a quite a while now. And while Sega has a spiritual successor of sorts with its magnificent Yakuza series, the popular GTA-like franchise doesn’t have a day/night system, active weather and NPCs with their own daily lives—or a decade-old unresolved cliffhanger. In what would be a holy union between L.A. Noire, Heavy Rain and Yakuza with a measured approach regarding QTE, Shenmue needs to come out of hiding, and what better way than with a reboot.? Sega may believe that Yakuza has already filled its action-adventure quota, but the life of a gangster isn’t for everyone, and a new Shenmue would be perfect for a schoolboy.

5) Duke Nukem: Let’s face it, Duke Nukem Forever has basically become synonymous with monumetnal disappointment and failure to perfom. After finally making it out of a 10+ years of development hell, Duke arrived back on the scene with outdated 90′s era one-liners, sophomoric humor and cheeky misogyny that felt uncomfortably earnest. “So wrong, yet… so right,” Duke un-funnily quips as he tastelessly slaps what appears to be breasts on an alien wall. Not to mention the bland, outdated and repetitive gameplay that left gamers wondering why they wanted this game ever seeing the light of day in the first place. In what could have been an opportunity to create a pitch-perfect parody of modern-day shooters, the best Gearbox Software could slap together from decade-old assets was to have Duke Nukem say things like “Power Armor is for pussies…” when offered Master Chief’s trademark suit. Just make sure you keep Jon St. John (the man is a genius), re-examine the formula, and make something that doesn’t absolutely reek of try-hard self-consciousness.

4) Silent Hill: So survival horror has been in a bit of slump lately. Resident Evil has long since abandoned the horror aspect of the game in favor of cinematic action-filled set pieces, and its hard to feel vulnerable in Dead Space when you’re playing as a wackadoo engineer that half the time looks like he’s auditioning for STOMP! and the other half blasting the limbs off of mutated baddies… and now its got co-op! Suffice it to say, it’s takes the likes of indie darlings like Lone Survivor and Amnesia: The Dark Descent to rise up and show the big boys of horror how its done. Not to be out-spooked by smaller studios who apparently ‘get it’, Silent Hill, the once -king of the survival horror genre, seriously needs to up its game. While Downpour showed a whole lot of promise, the series’ careful pacing, enemy design, and haunting atmosphere have crumbled away into a rust-covered world of jump-scares and abysmal combat. Perhaps a fresh start is in order? With Konami reportedly talking to Metal Gear superstar Hideo Kojima as a possible candidate to take on the franchise, Silent Hill is a franchise that deserves to be broken out of its dark dimension of mediocrity.

3) Snatcher: Speaking of Hideo Kojoma, it’s pretty safe to say that his Golden Child , Metal Gear, will always get its fair share of love and attention. Even Zone of the Enders is getting in on a little of the love lately with a new title on the way following its predecessors’ recent HD re-release. But of one of Kojima’s children, sadly, remains neglected. Snatcher, a Bladerunner-inspired adventure game, featured detective Gillian Seed, who would “look,” “investigate,” and “talk” in order to track the titular body-snatching robots. It’s safe to say that the adventure game has made a comeback, what with games like The Walking Dead being so well-received. Let’s also not forget that Snatcher is actually part of the Metal Gear canon—Gillian’s robot partner, Metal Gear, is explained to have been based on and named after the “Metal Gear menace of the 20th century.” So right off the bat you have two groups, the adventure fans and the Metal Gear fans, who, along with the game’s own cult following, would be in full support of a reboot.

2) Earthbound: Among Super Smash Bros. Brawl‘s all-star cast there are exist a handful less-recognizable fighters, including a pair of psychic boys named Ness and Lucas. For the uninitiated, the pair hail from Nintendo’s Mother series (known as Earthbound in the US). If you haven’t heard of Earthbound, you aren’t to blame: Nintendo only released one of the series’ games in the US, and they sort of bungled it. What most of us missed out on was an RPG featuring unsupervised children and social rejects setting off into their world, a fever-dream parody of Western society, to fight off invading threats. The series has a fanatical following that translated the Japan-only Mother 3 (Earthbound 2) when it became clear Nintendo had no intentions of localizing it.Such a dedicated fan base coupled with SMS recognition, and a reboot could very well be a ‘SMAAAASH!!’ hit for Nintendo.

1) Tenchu: While most ninja enthusiasts get their kicks from Ninja Gaiden, ninja purists demand something more. For them, if it ain’t slinking in the shadows and slitting throats in ancient Japan, it ain’t a ninja. Unfortunately, after the series’ legendary PSone heyday, the Tenchu series has been a mediocre shadow projection of former itself. With so many of free-form assassination games snooping about—Hitman, Dishonored, Assassin’s Creed—there’s no lack of inspiration for the genre’s grandaddy granddaddy. If running on rooftops, throwing ninja stars, and awesome stealth kill animations aren’t a good enough hook for the modern market, a Tenchu reboot could always rework their old insane acrobatic deaths-from-above.  And letting players go toe-to-toe as the game’s bosses a la Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven would be absolutely divine.

So there you have it. If DmC has taught us anything it’s that good things, despite backlash, can indeed come from a reboot. Whether it’s to bring an old franchise back from the land of forgotten titles or to reinvigorate a series that has gotten a bit stale, developers shouldn’t hesitate to pull the plug and start over from scratch. Granted, it doesn’t always work out the way it should. But if you look at DmC, and even further back with Castlevania: Lords of Shadow (which paid off in a big way for Konami), it starts to become clear that we shouldn’t be so quick to demonize reboots of the industry’s greatest hits. We should, at the very least, try to greet them with an open-mind. And if they suck, THEN we can bitch and moan until the end of time.

What do you think? What franchises do you think could use a fresh coat of paint? Sound off in the comment section below.

10 Game Franchises That Could Use A Reboot

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Assassin's Creed Get New Hero

It’s little surprise Ubisoft is prepping another Assassin’s Creed game, but given the many times the company had us playing as Ezio, it’s interesting to learn Connor won’t be back next time.

Additionally, we’ll be heading to a new moment in history. Goodbye, Revolutionary War!

Ubisoft made the announcement on its earnings call this morning, revealing another Assassin’s Creed game is in development, and that it’s scheduled for a release in the next fiscal year. Ubisoft’s next fiscal year ends March 2014, and it’s likely Ubisoft will continue sticking to its holiday timeframe.

In addition to being vague on a release date, it’s also unclear whether the next Assassin’s Creed will remain only on the current set of consoles, or straddle the current and next-generation sets of hardware. With E3 not all that far away, it won’t be long until we have a better picture of the future.

Connor could still return in a future game.

Assassin's Creed Get New Hero

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Will They Ever See The Light Of Day?

A PlayStation 4 reveal will make the console all official like. Then, expect a hardware race to kick off between Sony and Microsoft, with anticipation building for the new machines and new games.

What about the old machine? And the games that haven’t come out yet? The clock’s ticking!

There are some PlayStation 3 games that have been officially canned, like Eight Days. Then, there are upcoming games that always seem to be waiting for new info reveals. Here are some of the most noticeable titles (exclusive and not) that have been M.I.A. If they are going to make this generation, they better hurry it up!

These PlayStation 3 Games Are Running Out of TimeFrom Rockstar North, the folks behind the Grand Theft Auto games, Agent was to be an espionage game set in the late 1970s. Sony first announced that Rockstar was making a new PS3-exclusive franchise in 2007, but the game’s title wasn’t made public until 2009. Rockstar’s parent company, Take-Two, said Agent was still in development. A former Rockstar artist uploaded screenshots, giving gamers a first glimpse at what Agent could look like, if and when the game ever comes out.

These PlayStation 3 Games Are Running Out of Time Where to begin? Final Fantasy Versus XIII was announced back in 2006, along with a couple other games: Final Fantasy XIII and Final Fantasy Agito XIII. Those two titles were released (though, Agito was retitled Final Fantasy Type-0), but Versus is still missing. Kotaku ran a rumor that the game was either dead or being cannibalized for the next numeric Final Fantasy title. Square Enix’s honcho Yoichi Wada, however, said the rumor was “false”. Last fall, Versus designer Tetsuya Nomura asked fans to wait a “little longer” for the game. Versus doesn’t have a release date, and there haven’t been new game images or footage released recently.

These PlayStation 3 Games Are Running Out of TimeFirst officially shown at the E3 gaming expo in 2009, The Last Guardian had a 2011 release date that it didn’t make. The game’s designer, Fumito Ueda, quit Sony, but continues to work on the game as a freelancer. Sony says The Last Guardian still lives and is still a PS3 game. Western studios were brought in to work on the game, and Sony said last summer The Last Guardian will come out when it’s ready. Whenever that is!

These PlayStation 3 Games Are Running Out of TimeThis might be the oldest unreleased title slated for the PS3. First announced in 2004, the game was originally called Oni and is based on an unfinished Akira Kurosawa script that follows a half-Japanese blond-haired samurai. Then, in 2005, the game surfaced again, with a new title (Ni-Oh!) and penciled in as a PlayStation 3 exclusive. In 2010, the game was no longer being developed by Koei, but rather, by Team Ninja. Last summer, the game’s studio honcho said Ni-Oh! cleared alpha, adding that development “is continuing steadily.” Very, very, steadily.

These PlayStation 3 Games Are Running Out of Time Announced back in 2009 and largely AWOL since then, stealth title Thief 4′s development doesn’t exactly seem like smooth sailing. There are rumors that the game, a multi-platform title, is heading to next gen. While it might be time to worry about the game, the stylized THI4F title could be cause for concern, er C0NC3RN.

There are a handful of games (exclusive and multi-platform) not included in this list, such as Brother in Arms: Furious 4 (now a new game), or Whore of the Orient (it was only announced last year). Other titles, like Beyond: Two Souls are expected for a 2013 release.

In the past, Sony has supported its last gen consoles as it releases its latest hardware. And big PS2 titles did come out while the PS3 was out, such as God of War 2, which hit shelves four months after the release of the PS3. The next generation is likely to be no different. Some of these M.I.A. games could still be released on the PS3, even as the PS4 is coming out. That being said, the PS3 ship is starting to sail. The console’s days are numbered. These games better pick up the pace. And soon.

Will They Ever See The Light Of Day?

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The Great JRPG Revival Begins....

In case you haven’t noticed, GameXentral has been a bit wary about using the term “Japanese RPG” within the past year or so. With experiences like The Last Story, Xenoblade Chronicles, and Dark Souls eroding our preconceived notions about role-playing games from the East, the term “JRPG” is rapidly losing the meaning it once had — especially now that American creations like Costume Quest, Cthulu Saves the World, and Penny Arcade 3 have adopted certain design tropes once associated with another country. But even as the exciting world of genre classification continues to spin into total anarchy, some developers take no issue with delivering the expected; both Dragon Quest and Pokemon stand as excellent examples of developers continuing to iterate on a limited, time-tested formula, all while offering up enough new ideas to sustain the series. These two series may rely on ideas unchanged for decades, but they do so in a manner that keeps players engaged and addicted.

The long-awaited Level-5/Studio Ghibli collaboration Ni no Kuni seems to understand the elements that define “Japanese RPG,” but not the reasons why this genre grew so successful in the first place. If you’re looking for the qualities that transform this type of experience into a nearly bottomless bowl of comfort food for folks who cut their teeth on Square and Enix’s 16 and 32-bit offerings, you’ll find them all in this breathtakingly beautiful RPG — but delivered at such a leaden pace that the sheer amount of talent involved in this ambitious project feels absolutely wasted.

Imagine a new version of Pokemon that doesn’t let you capture a single one of those marketable little creatures until after the third gym, and you’ll get an idea of how reluctantly Ni no Kuni parcels out new content. The game opens with the expected onslaught of tutorials, and, in the tradition of Final Fantasy XIII, you’re rarely set free until the most basic of information has been drilled into your skull. Even as the hours stretch into the double digits, Level-5 drops in new elements that would have added some much-needed complexity during Ni no Kuni’s early chapters; it’s kind of like playing a game of Monopoly where players can only move their pieces around the board for the first hour — why burden folks with complicated concepts like “buying property” until they’ve become intimately familiar with the function of rolling dice?

I’ve generally come to regard excessive tutorials as a necessary evil; after a few hours of tedium, I’m typically set free, and the fun to follow tends to erase any bad memories of a game’s poorly-paced beginning. Ni no Kuni seems to follow this trend at first — until it slowly becomes clear that nearly every in-game action has been designed to take as long as humanly possible.

The Pokemon-like battle system, for instance, seems to be a snappy, action-based alternative to Nintendo’s own turn-based tradition, but Level-5 makes maintaining a stable of monsters into an unexpectedly excruciating experience. Ni no Kuni doesn’t just let you throw out a trap to grab the beast you’d like to keep as your own; instead, you have to wait for the chance to “charm” a downed monster, which entails fighting the same type of creature over and over until you’re lucky enough to have a fallen foe join your party instead of disappear in a puff of smoke. And while the game lets you micromanage your monsters’ stats, doing so involves feeding them one item at a time; not a hassle for small parties, but when your group eventually blossoms to nine separate creatures, prepare to watch the same animations play out for upwards of ten minutes.

This lackadaisical pacing runs straight to the core of Ni no Kuni, as the game emphasizes grinding above any other activity in order to make the most of of its compact and attractive settings. As with Pokemon, you’re encouraged to evolve your monster to new forms, but in Ni no Kuni, evolved monsters revert back to level one — and restoring their former strength takes much longer than you’d expect. The game also emphasizes keeping your monsters fully decked-out in the best gear; enemies on the map may flee in terror from your party once you’ve reached a high enough level — an idea taken from EarthBound that isn’t seen in enough RPGs — but bosses tend to destroy party members that lack the best equipment from that area’s shops. Yes, this idea shouldn’t strike anyone as out of the ordinary for the genre, but Ni no Kuni makes it necessary to outfit 12 different characters (since each summoner and their three monsters share HP, MP, and status effects), which makes “optional” side-quests a necessity and grinding a fact of life.

Ni no Kuni’s roots as a DS game also manage to undercut elements that could otherwise be interesting. The original (and unreleased in America) version of the game came with a hefty guidebook, which players had to consult in order to solve puzzles — consider it a whimsical form of copy protection. For example, if players needed to cross a chasm, they’d have to scan the included book for the right stylus motions to cast a “bridge” spell, which would then give them a means to move from point A to point B. While the console version doesn’t depend on an included tome, the game’s puzzles haven’t been changed to reflect this; instead of having to pore over actual pages to find a solution, the PS3 Ni no Kuni merely gives you a drop-down list of the spells you’ve learned so far — and in every case, the answer is staggeringly obvious. By implementing the laziest solution to transplant its puzzles from one format to another, Ni no Kuni doesn’t offer any interesting challenges to distract players from its battle-based tedium.

It’s a shame that Level-5 underthought the core elements of Ni no Kuni; as expected with anything branded with the Ghibli name, its world drips with detail and looks absolutely stunning — after just a few hours, Ni no Kuni had me asking “Why are we so excited about upcoming consoles when current-gen games are just starting to look this good?” The localization contains this same attention-to-detail, with legend Richard Honeywood adding wit and personality to even the most minor of NPC characters. But regardless of its jaw-dropping presentation, the game’s design comes off as lazy and uninspired, as if Ni no Kuni could earn a pass based on the Ghibli name alone. Even though there’s enough game here for a meaty, 25-hour adventure, Level-5 spreads this content incredibly thin, under the mistaken assumption that “bigger RPG” equals “better RPG.” One can only imagine what nature boy and notable curmudgeon Hayao Miyazaki would think of a Ghibli product designed to keep its audience locked to their TVs for as long as they can stand it.

The Great JRPG Revival Begins....

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