God of War to receive sequels
There’s no denying that the run away success of Sony’s flagship title, God of War, is a likely candidate for this year’s Game of Year award. Recent speculation has lead us to believe that Sony are planning to release two possible sequels to the successful title in the near future, as mentioned in a recent issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly.
The rumour mentioned that we could expect to see a sequel to the original on the PS2 as soon as 2006, and a third title in the series on the PS3 is in development. The developers nor Sony have yet to officially comment on the rumour, but looking at the success of the title it would be stupid of them to pass up the opportunity.
Earthbound 3 in development for DS?
Recent clues and speculation have been flying around the net faster than a homeless fellow chasing after a stray hundred-dollar bill. Earthbound/Mother creator Shigesato Itoe mentioned in an interview that he was at Kichijoji working on a secret game, which he labelled ‘it’.
Brownie Brown Games is also in the development phrase for a secret game labelled ‘Project B’. A flash movie has also been released, which surprisingly looks a lot similar to the art style of the old Earthbound titles.
Further still, developer Marvelous has opened up a page for an unannounced Nintendo DS game. The page features a countdown and a cartoon professor pushing buttons. Now anyone familiar with the art style of Earthbound will instantly pick up on the similarities between the two. What we've heard though is that this is Killer 7 producer, Gouichi Suda's, latest project entitled 'Contact', an RPG title slated for the DS next year.
Whether these ‘clues’ accumulate to anything remotely related to the Earthbound series remains to be seen, but we can hope.
Konami and Capcom to become one?
This rumour seems to be an analysis more than anything, but then again anything could happen. Anyway, Bloomberg is reporting that the two Japanese video-game companies 'may' form a merger to help raise earnings amid rising costs.
Now the Japanese market isn’t particularly new to mergers this year, with Square Enix recently acquiring Taito, Sammy buying Sega, and Bandai merging with Namco were all business strategies that took place this year. According to Bloomberg, in the past 15 years seven of the top 10 game makers were either created through acquisitions or through mergers. These weren’t formed due to these companies facing financial ruin, either - according to Bloomberg they were formed because companies are looking to the future and setting themselves up for the production costs of future game projects for PS3 and Xbox 360 consoles, which will apparently put a much larger hole in developers wallets compared to this generation.
At this stage this is all speculation of what ‘could’ happen if the two companies seek to expand in the market, and to meet financial cost coming into the next-generation of gaming. While this sounds like a good idea in the long run, it is more than likely that neither company would be willing to turnover to a merger. But then again, sillier things have occurred...
Related Articles:
Loading...
