Buzz! PS3 will have plenty of questions, downloadables
Board games come and go, but there's something about interactive trivia games that are timeless, ageless, and always entertaining with a group of friends. IGN interviewedBuzz! creator David Amor on the new PS3 iteration of the franchise and we're going to outline the entertaining bits below.
Relentless Software isn't exactly a technology company, so programming for the PS3 hasn't been as big an obstacle as other devs. They're focused more on the game itself, which they want to make as social as possible. Keep the PS3 in the big family den, you know?
The game will be a Blu-ray release, not downloadable. However, like with Singstar, there will be a ton of downloadable content for quiz-enthusiasts. The plan is to have a hefty amount of stuff available from day one of the game's launch.
There are currently about 5,000 questions on the disc itself in a multitude of categories. Interestingly, these aren't created solely by Relentless Software. A very large portion of the questions are outsourced to a company called Sleepy Dog, then fact-checked for accuracy. Sony has even approached National Geographic for making their own category of questions.
In fact, there could be a lot of companies in the future giving categories for download. Heck, we will probably be able to up our own categories of questions for people to check out, give ratings as to their value, etc. This service will be in the game and will be free, whereas company question packs would get upped on the PS Store for an acceptable price.
Online matches sound fun -- person vs. person, team vs. team, et cetera. Nothing ground breaking, but feeling like you're on a quiz show is good enough.
There's a lot more discussed, especially the details about creating your own question packs, playable characters, and keeping track of the stuff people could potentially upload (copyrighted images and such are out of the question, for now). The controller for the PS3 Buzz! is the same as the PS2 version, so you quiz experts won't have to adjust to a new steering wheel, so to speak. The game is due out in Spring of 2008.
