InsaneBear

Reactions: Rumor round-up

So we haven’t really posted all that much this week because the news has been kind of slow. I’m still having trouble determining if it’s really been slow or if it just seems that way after E3 chewed me up and spit me out. But anyways, there have been a few interesting rumors I thought I’d share with every one.

The juiciest rumor of the week comes from 1UP, who are reporting that Microsoft executive Shane Kim may have been hinting at something bigger when he said that Project Natal’s launch will be as big as a console launch. Exactly what Kim was hinting at is rumored to be a brand new Xbox that comes standard with Natal. The console could even drop the “360″ name for the decidedly horrid sounding “Xbox Natal”.

The Natal camera will still work with every Xbox 360, just as Microsoft has been stating, but the new “Xbox Natal” would feature slightly improved hardware that would allow for better graphics, frame rate, and general performance. All 360 games would still be playable on it, but developers could take advantage of the added horsepower in the Natal system and relegate regular 360 gamers to inferior settings, not unlike the PC market of today. The new system would really be more of an evolution of the Xbox 360 than a whole new console.

Now let’s remember that this is all just rumor and hearsay, and then let’s hope it stays that way. The very reason why I’m a console gamer and not a PC gamer is because I know I won’t have to upgrade my hardware every couple of years to get the best gaming experience. It would be a horrible move on Microsoft’s part to split their console market like that. And thinking from Microsoft’s perspective, I can understand why they’d want to launch a Natal focused Xbox, but why the hardware revision? They’ve stated that their market for Natal is people who’ve never owned a video game console, so obviously it’s a good idea to offer a SKU that comes with Natal packed in, but brand new hardware is probably going to cost about as much as brand new hardware. Are total non-gamers really willing to spend upwards of $400 for “Xbox Natal” when they could just get a Wii for $250, or more likely $200 by the time this system would launch? If Microsoft thinks they call sell this thing for anything more than $300 then they’ve already lost the battle.

This one is less of a rumor and more of a case of a company executive confirming a game’s existence before he probably should have. But for fans of 2008′s Mirror’s Edge, Senior VP of EA in Europe Patrick Soderlund has some good news. “You will see another Mirror’s Edge for sure. It’s just a matter of when that time is and what we do with it. We have a small team on it and I’m excited about what we do.”

Considering the game’s underwhelming sales and tepid reviews, a sequel wasn’t exactly a given. But EA appears committed to building the franchise. “Mirror’s Edge was a risky move. It was a bold move, a very innovative and inspiring move,” Soderlund said.

It’s good to know that Mirror’s Edge 2 is in the works and that EA understands that the first one “wasn’t perfect by any means.” I thought the game showed a lot of promise and looked very fresh and new at the time, but it just wasn’t put together well enough to warrant a purchase. Hopefully the sequel will rectify that. But given that there’s only a “small team” currently working on it, it’s likely that we won’t be hearing anything on this title for a while.

And lastly there’s the confirmation of Battlefield 3, the first direct iteration of the Battlefield franchise since 2005′s critically praised Battlefield 2: Modern Combat. EA COO John Pleasants revealed that DICE is hard at work on the title which is expected sometime in EA’s next fiscal year (April 10th, 2010 – March 31st, 2011).

While the game’s setting or theme were not explicitly stated, Pleasants did say that “We have a lot of IP in that [shooter] area, and we have not not noticed that Call of Duty has a significant share of that business.” With Modern Warfare 2 looming, it seems safe to assume that Battlefield 3 will focus on modern combat yet again, which is good news considering how bad Battlefield 2142 was.

Overall, this is great news. The Battlefield series has always set standards for military FPSs and the heavy emphasis on vehicular combat is something that the Call of Duty games never followed through on. But with that said, I do feel like the Bad Company spin-offs are a better direction for the series. Give me a game with personality over a generic military shooter any day.

Author: Cody

Tags: battlefield 3, ea, microsoft, mirror's edge 2, project natal, xbox 360, xbox natal