Shots Fired

Just a day after EA’s announcement about how they don’t have a single title in gestation for the Wii U, a bold employee uses the social megaphone that is Twitter to clue us in as to why.

Credited as a Senior Software Engineer and having been with EA since 1999, Bob Summerwill has since sweept his Twitter account of controversy.  You can still check out Bob’s heated, but disarmingly honest, comments on EA and Nintendo’s relationship hereabouts.  Among them, Summerwill criticizes Nintendo for running shop like it’s still 1990.

“They should have ‘done a Sega’ and offered Mario/Zelda as PS4/Durango exclusives.”  That’s my favorite, if you were wondering.

You’d figure those in the industry would temper their opinions when speaking on an immensely public platform what with the whole Adam Orth catastrophe fresh in everyone’s minds, but I’m not complaining.  I wouldn’t have “Done a Sega” otherwise and…I simply don’t want to live in that world.

Ryu by Anirudh Sainath

EA: Absolutely Nothing in the Pipeline for Wii U

Here’s the byline bouncing around this evening: Despite EA announcing an “unprecedented partnership” between itself and Nintendo at E3 circa 2011, the game publishing giant has revealed it currently has no games in development for the struggling Wii U.

That oath, made while CEO John Riccitiello had a clasp on the company’s reigns, manifested in several ports of popular titles — Mass Effect 3, Need for Speed: Most Wanted, and Madden included — that long since had homes on the Xbox 360 and PS3.  According to EA’s spokesperson, Jeff Brown, those handful of ports encompass the whole of their Wii U partnership, ensuring future blockbusters such as Battlefield 4, FIFA, and Madden 25 won’t be making it onto Nintendo’s newest console.

Having that waterway dry up — the”waterway” here referring to one of the biggest third-party publishers in the world — further shoves Wii U into a rough corner.  But, as Kotaku illustrates, ever since the first Wii third-parties have had a hell of a hard time finding success on Nintendo’s systems.  Usually Nintendo’s first-party hits take up the lion’s share of sales while third-parties are left to scavenge for scraps.  Follow that with Nintendo’s increasingly upward slope of a fight to put their hardware in gamers’ homes, and even the big boys like EA are turning their back to the Japanese monolith.

Business is business, however, and EA isn’t likely to give Wii U the lifetime shunning if the system starts to perform well.  Hell, EA might even be threatening a drought just to incite Nintendo into shaping up and narrowing their focus on pushing their console.  Just a musing.  Ultimately, time — and your dollars — will tell.

N7 by muju

John Carpenter Interested in a Dead Space Film?

With a sixty-five year resume spanning the likes of The Thing, Escape From New York, Christine, and the original Halloween, I don’t have to explain to you why director John Carpenter is a silver screen legend. 

Carpenter has some crazy range when reviewing his career — films like They Live and Big Trouble in Little China prove just how far out there the filmmaker’s mind goes — but his cinema doctorate is undoubtedly in horror.  So as a former twelve-year-old entranced, excited, and terrified by this man’s many instant classics (Prince of Darkness will alter your moral fiber), an internal geek-bomb goes off when I hear John Carpenter is interested in making a Dead Space movie.

A longtime supporter of video games and their unbound potential for storytelling, Carpenter likens the appeal of Visceral Games’ survival horror title to 1979’s Alien (a hit-you-in-the-eye-it’s-so-apparent influence on the games).  “The first game was more - I guess it was like Alien - but not quite.  It was a little different than that,” says Carpenter.

“I maintain that Dead Space would just make a great movie because you have these people coming onto an abandoned, shut-down space ship and they have to start it up and something’s on board.  It’s just great stuff.”

Way back when the first Dead Space game was making waves, a feature film was being optioned with director D.J. Caruso attached.  Formerly, Caruso worked on the Shia LaBeouf vehicles, Disturbia and Eagle Eye.  That deal eventually lapsed and fans’ dreams of seeing Shia step into Isaac Clarke’s rig — I can’t even finish that sentence; nobody fucking wanted that.

Dead Space has found its gore laden way into just about every avenue of media — comics, novels, animated films, toys — but hasn’t carved a path through Hollywood yet, and Dead Space 3’s less than stellar sales do little to endorse an adaptation.  That hasn’t deterred Carpenter, though.  “I would love to make Dead Space, I’ll tell you that right now,” he says.  “That one is ready-made.”

Infamous: Second Son (PlayStation 4)

It’s been seven years since the Beast came to New Marias.  Cole McGrath’s story of heroism — or tyranny, depending on your choices — has ended and his efforts have saved the world. The price for this salvation came at the expense of the Conduits; superpowered humans now pushed toward extinction status in the fallout of New Marias.  Still fearful and reeling from the destruction wrought by the Beast and Cole’s battle, our government has labeled all surviving Conduits as bioterrorists.

Second Son takes the series to the real world city of Seattle, Washington where players will don the role of Delsin Rowe, a twenty-four year old whose innate powers as a Conduit are triggered by an incident related to these so-called “bioterrorists.”  Delsin’s specialty, however, isn’t of the electrical variety but instead stem from his ability to control smoke.  For fans who felt like an unstoppable thunder god playing as Cole, harnessing smoke may seem like a few rungs below awesome on the power ladder.  But Delsin, who also wields chain-like melee weapon Belmont-style, is promised to have a more robust and intriguing arsenal than what’s been revealed, some tapping into powers beyond the manipulation of smoke.

He’ll need it since just being a Conduit is the same as having a big, bright target painted on the back of his head.  Your central antagonist, the Big Brother-like DUP (Department of United Protection), wants Delsin bad and aren’t too particular on whether that means riddled with holes or not.  Luckily, being a superpowered demigod means you’ll at least make for a hard target.

Second Son is one of the first attention robbing blockbusters the PlayStation 4 owns.  Supposedly a launch title for Sony’s latest and sleekest, developer Sucker Punch has yet to peg it down with an official date.  My hope against hopes?  This bad boy dropping on launch day.  That’d be mighty fine.  Mighty fine, indeed.

Preemptive Strike: EA Registers Domains for Battlefield 13 Through 20

Don’t mistake this for news in any way.  This isn’t EA jumping the proverbial gun and announcing plans for sixteen-plus years of Battlefield games.  EA can be overzealous, hell, yes, but precognitive?  No.  I don’t even think Activision sees a twenty-year forecast for their own military shooter/money printing machine.

What’s happened here is an interesting case brought to you by none other than the information age.  Thanks to an enterprising third-party hoping to trick you into their clutches one day, the domain names for Battlefield 10 through 12 are bought up and out of EA’s hands.

Not used to being pushed around by that bastard internet (unless we’re voting, of course), EA’s legal team went on a shopping spree, buying up domains ranging from Battlefield 13 all the way to Battlefield 20.  Battlefield 5 through 9 are already in the company’s pocket.

Think they might be playing it extremely on the cautious side?  Tell you what.  In the distant future, when you’re amped up about Battlefield 21 and decide to check out the official site for trailers using your brain’s internalized wifi and merely thinking about the link brings you to a website dedicated exclusively to neon-irradiated dongs, their horrific glowing emissions, and the everyday objects those emissions melt…EA will still probably be voted Worst Company of the Year for wholly unrelated reasons.

Back in modern times, where radioactive dongs are simply hypothetical (…but for how long?), Battlefield 4 is expected out for current and next-gen consoles this Fall.