Welcome to Beyond Co-Op, a weekly piece that talks about industry stories that may or may not be related to co-op gaming.
The stories for this week:
- EA Figuring Out How to Continue Mirror's Edge
- "Have You Seen Any Sailors?"...Shemnue 3 Coming?
- Bungie's Next Game "Massively Multiplayer"
- Street Fighter 2 Celebrates 20 Years
- Dragon Age II, Dueling MLB Games, Pokemon White and Black This Week
EA Figuring Out How to Continue Mirror's Edge
My first question of course is “what the heck is there to figure out? Make the sequel already.” Supposedly a followup is still in the cards even though DICE has put all hands on getting Battlefield 3 out the door by the end of the year. I thought Mirror’s Edge was a really good game and made me feel immersed more than many games do.
Unfortunately it didn’t sell well, although I would argue that is more because it came out around the same time as many other major games (Call of Duty: World at War, Left 4 Dead, World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King expansion, Gears of War 2, Resistance 2, Fallout 3 and others) and it got left in the dust by many players. EA wants to work on a sequel that will sell 2 to 3 times the amount the original did, kind of like Dead Space 2’s initial sales jump from the original. I only hope there will be another game because playing as Faith was an experience to be undertaken. In many ways Mirror’s Edge is this generation’s Beyond Good and Evil (now out in HD on the 360 and coming to PS3 later…buy it and play it!), a fantastic game that was sadly overlooked by many.
Source: Joystiq
"Have You Seen Any Sailors?"...Shemnue 3 Coming?
Ryo and his sick obsession with sailors may be coming back for another go around. Yu Suzuki was at GDC this week and commented about how he thinks Sega will let him make the third game in the series. Don’t get your hopes up too much though, we’ve been on this carousel before it seems. He did note that it would depend on “budget issues” which is certainly not a good sign. Sega had estimated it cost $70 million to make the original Shenmue on Dreamcast, but Suzuki refuted that this week saying it only cost a mere $47 million to make. Yeah, with those types of budgets things are not looking good.
Source: Joystiq
Bungie's Next Game "Massively Multiplayer"
This isn’t necessarily surprising given all the rumors that have flowed since Activision announced a 10-year publishing deal with Bungie at last year’s E3. One would guess they will at least show off the game at this year’s E3, but who really knows. One thing we do know is that the game will not be World of Warcraft in space.
Source: Joystiq
Street Fighter 2 Celebrates 20 Years
Street Fighter 2 celebrated its 20th year this week. Although it may not be as big as Mario or Zelda in people’s hearts, for arcade goers of the early 1990s this was the holy grail of games and one that sparked the dwindling arcade scene at the time. I don’t necessarily remember when I first played the game, but I do remember the 1991 Minnesota State Fair and the lineup of quarters on the machine for people ready to play. It was nuts in the now defunct Penny Arcade that year and a lot of people were huddled around the arcade cabinet for this game.
Of course this game would spawn many updates, all of which I played both in the arcade and on my home consoles, especially the SNES. If I remember correctly, I think the original SNES cart cost $80 when it came out because of all the extra chips put in to make it as close to the arcade experience as problem. Only reference I get with a quick search is $120 in the UK.
If I ever complete my second book after Growing Up 8-Bit (working on possibly re-writing it. Thank you to all that have purchased it, the re-write would be a free download for you), Street Fighter 2 and all its updates take a good portion of the first part of the book as it is written today.
Source: me
Dragon Age II, Dueling MLB Games, Pokemon White and Black This Week
Busy week. I never played the first Dragon Age and was kind of turned off by the demo on the 360 with this one. I sure wish I had a newer computer to play all these newer games on instead of being stuck with the console versions. The yearly MLB duel is this week as well as the PS3-only MLB 2011: The Show comes out versus the multi-platform MLB 2K11. Finally you can once again catch them all with the Nintendo DS release of Pokemon Black and Pokemon White. You know, I’ve never played a Pokemon game, but I know a lot of people out there love them to death.
Source: me