Kojima Productions: major announcement at Metal Gear event next week

Kojima Productions is celebrating Metal Gear’s 25th anniversary next week with an event at Tokyo Midtown. It appears that Hideo Kojima may be planning some surprise announcements at the event as teased by his staff that will be earth shattering.

According to the latest official Kojima Productions podcast [via Gaming Everything], the crew, Ken Mendoza and Chris Johns revealed that there will be “a lot of exciting announcements” made next week at the Metal Gear event.


Johns revealed that the announcements will not only be big for fans of the Metal Gear franchise, but will shake the industry to its core by the announcements.





Kojima revealed previously that he is producing two games, Zone of Enders and Project Orge. According to Kojima Project Orge is a new open world IP that will be running on the new Fox Engine. The game will feature upwards of 100 hours as gamers will be able to explore within the world in great lengths.

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Microsoft scavenging laid-off OnLive employees with networking mixer

There is an interesting development as a by-product of the collapse of OnLive involving Microsoft. Apparently the company will be hosting an event with the specific goal of picking through and hiring select employees laid-off from OnLive.

As reported, OnLive went through a form of bankruptcy at which point it was bought out by a venture capitalist. In the process of the transaction over 50 percent of the 200 some employees were laid-off.


According to Venture Beat, It appears that Microsoft is taking this opportunity to staff up for its own cloud computing services by inviting the former OnLive employees to a networking mixer at its Mountain View, California campus.

With Sony picking up Gaikai for a cool $380 million, it wouldn’t be all that shocking to see Microsoft augment its workforce with former OnLive employees. Analysts have speculated that Microsoft would not buy OnLive as the company would probably pursue its own homebrew solution.

However, this OnLive networking mixer may be a clear sign that the company is also thinking about cloud gaming for the Xbox 360 and not just focusing on its Microsoft Azure cloud solution, which is geared towards applications.

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Rockstar drops three new screens from Grand Theft Auto V [UPDATE]

After months of silence about Grand Theft Auto V, Rockstar recently dropped some screenshots from the game. The screens show off some of the transport modes that will be found in GTA V, showing a bicycle, exotic sports car and a fighter jet.

The first screen is of a man riding a bicycle across the beach that looks similar to the one seen in San Andreas. Incidentally the last GTA game that had bicycles in the game was San Andreas also. It is widely believed that the bicycle was the least popular transport method due to it requiring rapid button mashing to get speed on it.




The second screenshot shows an exotic sports car labeled as the Cheetah. For those that have played the older GTA games on the PS2 will recall the Cheetah in San Andreas and in the previous iterations of the game.

While the Cheetah wasn’t the fastest car in the previous games, it was popular for its overall speed, super easy handling and braking. According to the screenshot it appears that Rockstar has ditched Ferrari car design for the Cheetah in favor of the Koenigsegg Agera.



Lastly, the final screen should have many gamers excited as it shows a fighter jet as one of the transport methods that will be available in the game. It is speculated that the fighter jet is an upgraded version of the Hydra from San Andreas that was slated for GTA IV but was taken out.

If you closely into the cockpit of the jet, you can see the supposed main character for GTA V, Alberto De Silva flying it.



These pictures are probably taken from the PC version of the game, but they still clearly show a dramatic improvement in graphics from GTA IV. The first screenshot shows off some pretty advanced particle effects and blurring with the second showing off smoke effects for the game.



UPDATED with new screenshots of leisure activities in the game:

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Former PS3 Sony game ‘Adrift’ returns as ‘Remember Me’ by Capcom

Adrift used to be a Sony funded second party game with Dontnod studio a few years back but was canceled along with a bunch of other incubated projects. Dontnod has since partnered with Capcom and dramatically evolved the game into a fresh and stylish game titled Remember Me.

Remember Me takes place in the distant future where memories can be digitized, bought and sold. Memory has become an economical factor in the market place giving power over certain wealthy individuals.


The game centers around a female character, Nilin, who is a former memory hunter that can hack into other people’s minds to steal their memories. After getting her own memory wiped she sets out on a journey to figure out who she really is. From the preview shown at gamescom, the game plays a lot like Assassin’s Creed with a strong emphasis on platforming and scaling buildings.


According to Dontnod Remember Me is drastically different from the game that was under development with Sony as the concept of memories didn’t even exist. It is not clear why Sony decided to cancel such a promising title at that time, but apparently the game has been under development for over four years and have gone through several iterations.

According to Joystiq, Dontnod creative lead, Jean-Maxime Moris stated that at that time Sony was canceling a bunch of projects which included Adrift.


I won’t go into too many details, but basically they cancelled a bunch of projects, and we were just one of them. It felt bad at the time. And now, in retrospect, it’s just one step toward where we are now.

There was a point a few years back when Sony determined it was making too many games and was canceling projects left and right which included Eight Days and The Getaway.


The recent gameplay shown during gamescom has piqued my interest level as the world has a Bladerunner/Deus Ex vibe to it. Remember Me is set to launch May 2013 for the PS3, Xbox 360 and PC.

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Microsoft confirms ‘new Xbox’ accidentally

There’s a new Xbox on the way, and that’s not me gazing into my crystal ball, that’s someone from Microsoft dropping the ball.

We all know that both Microsoft and Sony are at least developing – if not fully preparing to launch – new home games consoles in the near future. However, unlike Nintendo, which announced the existence of the Wii U very early in development, both companies are playing their cards very close to their chests. Some thought we’d see a teaser at E3 2012, but that turned out not to be the case. Which means all money is now on E3 2013 for an announcement and unveiling of what looks likely to be the PS4 and Xbox 8.


Assuming the consoles are now having games developed for them, there will be thousands of people with at least knowledge of what to expect from them, including everybody in the loop at both Sony and Microsoft. One of those at the latter has confirmed a new Xbox is on the way, with an obvious slip of the tongue he’ll no doubt live to regret.

In an interview with The Verge, Windows Live General Manager Brian Hall said:


“We’ve had Hotmail and operated Hotmail for about 16 years. We obviously have Exchange, and Outlook, that people use at work. We just decided it was time to do something new and bring the best from each of those and put them together and release it right in time for the new wave of products that we could have coming out with Windows 8, with the new version of Office, with the new Windows Phone and the new Xbox.”

Yes, that’s it, just one small reference at the end of a couple of sentences about new Microsoft products. But that’s all we needed, as this is the first reference made to a new Xbox by a Microsoft employee. There’s little else we can glean from this statement: Windows 8 is being released on Oct. 26, but it’s obvious that the new Xbox will not be out before 2013. Still, it’s on its way, it’s now a matter of when rather than if. As confirmed by Microsoft.
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