It’s been nearly 7 years since Star Wars: Battlefront II underwhelmed us. Highly anticipated, it departed somewhat from the premise of the original Star Wars: Battlefront and though it retains an 84% Metacritic rating, it has not been fondly remembered. Not helping matters were its increasingly dismal ports, like the ghastly PC version and the teribad PSP edition. That, and the fact that developer Pandemic Studios was killed off by Electronic Arts in 2009, (It was supposed to be picked up by Free Radical but that didn’t pan out) guaranteed that the series would not be developed further. Or would it?
Lately, the rumor that Spark Unlimited is taking up the series has persisted, particularly as the developer coyly refused to confirm or deny the rumors. These rumors may have just gained more credibility thanks to a job listing posted to their site. Sparks Unlimited is seeking a Senior Combat Designer to work on “a 3rd Person Action/Adventure sequel in a high-profile science fiction franchise currently greenlit for full production development for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC markets.” This in and of itself isn’t much, but thanks to some digging by Playstation Lifestyle, more clues surface:
* Former Senior Software Engineer for Spark Unlimited, John Lawrie, lists “Unannounced third person sword fighting game (well known IP, Xbox 360, PS3)” on his LinkedIn profile.
* Another developer’s LinkedIn page says “I have been working for three years in a AAA third person shooter using Unreal Engine and Kynapse AI middleware.”
* Spark Unlimited have themselves hinted at this possibility with a recent tweet – “Since we are working on a sequel for a well known sci-fi franchise, all aspects must remain secret.”
Based on this, we think Playstation Lifestyle is right to identify Star Wars: Battlefront III as the title in question. Will it be good? Trust your feelings. Use the force. And hope they manage to put together a PC version.
The Warhammer 40,000 series is seeing some seriously deep discounts this weekend on Steam. Hit this link to take advantage while I outline some of the prices you can pay.
All the Warhammer games have had their prices reduced by two-thirds. Space Marine, the latest, is down to just $ 17; meanwhile, most of the games in the Dawn of War and Dawn of War II franchises are less than $ 7, with Dawn of War II: Retribution clocking in at just over $ 10.
Plus, you can try Retribution’s multiplayer mode out for free this weekend. Huzzah.
Reports from America suggest that Facebook could be filing the S-1 for its $ 10 billion IPO as early as today,with an expected valuation somewhere between $ 75 billion and $ 100 billion.
According to the Wall Street Journal Facebook is aiming for the IPO between April and June, and papers will be filed this week.
The filing will reveal some of the financial workings behind the social networking giant.
The MWE Emperor 200 PC work station is curvy, metallic, futuristic and probably awesome. I can see how a commenter on Kotaku’s gallery showing off the station might think that it, like cake and grief counseling, could be a lie.
With three 24-inch LED screens, an ergonomic leather chair and even its own air filtration system, it sounds like the Emperor 200 belongs in an Aperture Science Re-Education and Incentivization Testification Preparation Chamber, where you’re strapped down with your eyelids glued open, brainwashed by images of puppies getting stabbed or something. But it’s not. It’s just a $ 45,000 gaming rig that helps to minimize your physical movement, all but guaranteeing you do nothing but play Skyrim and The Old Republic until you’re too fat to ever move again.
Activision has rolled out a schedule of all the planned Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 downloadable content coming out this year, and there’s quite a bit of it. Among the normal stuff — maps, mostly — are a few interesting gems: specifically, game modes and Spec Ops missions.
You can see the full calendar here, which documents what month content will be hitting (which is marked “Elite Only,” I assume referring to the scheduling, since premium Elite subscribers get stuff earlier than regular players). The schedule shows off the 20 DLC pieces Infinity Ward and Activision has promised, but as to just when all this stuff will be available (specifically to PC gamers) is a tough call. As it appears right now, the hierarchy is as follows: Xbox 360 Elite subscribers; Elite subscribers on every other platform (and possibly regular players on Xbox 360); regular players on every other platform. The standard deal between Activision and Microsoft on DLC exclusivity is one month, so expect about that much delay before you MW3 DLC makes its way out to PC for download.
We’re pretty dubious of any time-travel methods that don’t involve police boxes from the 1960s, but Final Fantasy XIII-2‘s horcrux Historia Crux and time gates look like a fairly stable, albeit significantly less British, way to traverse the annals of history.
[Gamasutra rounds up recent reports on the Japanese games industry from local news site Andriasang.com, a leading destination for English-language news on Japan's game industry.] In our latest round-up of Japanese game industry news not previously reported on Gamasutra, we look at the 3DS stand that will come bundled with Kid Icarus: Uprising (pictured), two social gaming milestones, and Gundam successes for Namco Bandai. Namco Bandai social games membership tops 10M Along with its many …
Holy s–t. Binary Domain, coming out February 28, hasn’t really been on my radar, but apparently it should have been, because this trailer I’m about to show you is totally and ridiculously awesome. It looks like THE Japanese game to play this year. I’ll just have to get over my annoyance with shooters to play it, though. We’ll see how things are going next month.
[Gamasutra rounds up recent reports on the Japanese games industry from local news site Andriasang.com, a leading destination for English-language news on Japan's game industry.] In our latest round-up of Japanese game industry news not previously reported on Gamasutra, we look at the 3DS stand that will come bundled with Kid Icarus: Uprising (pictured), two social gaming milestones, and Gundam successes for Namco Bandai. Namco Bandai social games membership tops 10M Along with its many …
