LittleBigPlanet going to PC?
It’s impossible to deny that LittleBigPlanet is one of Sony’s cornerstone games for the holiday season, and the company is relying on the quirky platformer where you and your friends can create and share levels to drive both software and hardware sales in the coming months.
We’ve all just assumed all along that the game is a PS3 exclusive since that’s how Sony operates, that is until this story was posted, claiming to show the game’s promo box featuring a PC logo right there next to Sony’s.
The story started an outburst of commentary on N4G, leaving fanboys raging at one another over the prospect of yet another PS3 exclusive jumping ship. However, in all the vitriol and venom there are a few key points, if you take the time to sort them out of all the junk:
- The LittleBigPlanet art used is not the official box art and looks fake
- The boxes at the bottom, claiming that the game is for both the PS3 and PC, are not equally spaced
- The scan uses an old Sony logo, not the new Playstation 3 logo
- Sony has never published any announced console exclusive on the PC; the only PC games published are those handled by SOE
So where does all that leave us? With what is likely a quick Photoshop job trying to get attention causing half the Internet to come to a grinding halt. While we don’t have official confirmation and therefore the means to kill the rumor, we have absolutely no reason to believe it either.
TGR Verdict: Very Unlikely
Ghostbusters to be PS3 Exclusive?
We go from the rumor about a game losing PS3 exclusivity to one gaining it. The gaming world was shocked to learn that Activision had decided not to publish the nearly-complete Ghostbusters game, leaving its future in a state of development limbo. Now comes the interesting theory that Sony may snatch up the game and publish it as a PS3 exclusive.
The basic reasoning for the rumor goes like this. Sony Pictures owns the rights to the Ghostbusters films, and originally worked out the creation of the Ghostbusters game as a joint venture with Vivendi Universal. With Vivendi being acquired by Activision and that company dropping the game, Sony Pictures now has the opportunity to court new suitors, and who better than their own in-house game publisher?
So far, those involved with the project haven’t given us much to go on, only insinuating that the game would be available sometime in 2009 to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the first movie, as well as a quote from Terminal Reality’s Mark Randal claiming that, "Ghostbusters will be published… That’s all I can say at the moment.”
The only problem with the logic that the game could become a Sony exclusive is that the Xbox 360 version has been in development just as long as the PS3 iteration and is nearly done as well. Would the film company that holds the license really be willing to take the potential lost sales, as well as eat all the money sunk into the creation of a 360 version of the game just to pull the plug now? We hear about games losing console exclusivity all the time, but I can’t think of a single case where a game becomes an exclusive this late in the development cycle. While the position of Sony Pictures holding the license makes this a special case, it still seems a little far-fetched.
TGR Verdict: Unlikely
Realtime Worlds Making Crackdown 2?
The original Crackdown was a bit of a slow burn, earning fairly positive review scores and very solid word of mouth, making it one of those games that didn’t have any blockbuster sales debut numbers, but still able to move a considerable number of units over the long haul. Now come the inevitable questions regarding a sequel for the title, as well as the question of who is going to handle it.
Of course, the obvious choice would be for Realtime Worlds, makers of the original to helm the next game. However, that’s not a given as Microsoft owns the rights to the game and hasn’t exactly promised the game to anyone. In that respect, the company is free to pursue whoever they want as a developer for a sequel, so if they were unhappy with the Realtime Worlds product, they can simply go elsewhere.
For their part, Reatime Worlds bemoans the decision to not start immediate work on a sequel once the original hit.
“It was a horrible, horrible decision that we still dwell on,” said studio boss Colin Macdonald.
“But I don’t think the door’s closed. Obviously, right now we’re tied up with APB and everything else, but hopefully in the future we’ll have the resource and something can be worked out with Microsoft.
“But at the end of the day we’re a company that has to do what’s best for the company. We’ve got to stay in business. And the numbers just didn’t add up. We’re not in the business of doing things because we’d like to, if we can’t guarantee that it makes sense for the company. That doesn’t work.”
So the game that defied conventions by continuing to sell long past the first two weeks may actually doom the very developers who created it into not being allowed to handle the sequel. Fate can be cruel can’t it? We’re hoping that Microsoft does the common sense thing and allows Realtime Worlds the opportunity to handle the sequel.
TGR Verdict: Likely
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