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Aerial shooter Strike Vector targets January 28 launch
French indie studio Ragequit Corporation has revealed an unexpectedly near-term release date for its airborne first-person multiplayer shooter Strike Vector: January 28. The game, which counts Quake 3 and Crimson Skies among its inspirations, drops players into the cockpit of the titular "Vector," a futuristic VTOL jet that can either fly like a traditional fighter plane or hover like a helicopter. The real draw of the ship though, lies in its customizable armaments. Ragequit Corporation claims that the Vector offers "hundreds of combinations" of available weaponry, which should make it easier to ensure that your flying death machine is a unique snowflake among the hordes of other pilots you'll be battling against. While no price is listed on the game's Steam page as of yet, Eurogamer claims that once on sale, Strike Vector will bear a $24.90 price tag.
PSA: Last weekend to play Xbox 1 games on Live
This is it. Cue The Doors record, because next Thursday, April 15th, Microsoft will be turning out the lights on the servers that run original Xbox games on Xbox Live, which means that this weekend will be the last non-workdays you've got to play Star Wars: Battlefront 2, Crimson Skies, or Halo 2 online. If it's any consolation, remember that the reason for the shutdown is that older hardware on the service is keeping Microsoft from being able to update things like the friends list limit, so in this case, change should bring some welcome progress. But as for us, we'll be vegging out all day on Sunday playing Conker: Live and Reloaded. We just called Aunt Emma to tell her this weekend's visit will have to wait -- something more important has come up. [Thanks, Chris!]
Smith & Tinker looking into homes for Crimson Skies, Shadowrun IPs
Smith & Tinker founder Jordan Weisman recently spoke about his plans for the other FASA IPs he licensed from Microsoft. In a recent interview with Gamespot, Weisman teased, "I think Crimson Skies is something we'd love to get some energy around, and we have some devious plans--we'll see if those materialize." Intriguing!Shadowrun fans, however, shouldn't expect to be nearly as intrigued -- at least not anytime soon. "Shadowrun was recently...not treated well...shall we say, so the thought was let a little time pass before approaching that one again," Weisman admitted. As for the beloved MechWarrior franchise, the series reboot is currently in development by Piranha Games for PC and Xbox 360. Smith & Tinker plans to farm out development of these old IPs to other studios over time, so if you're a fancy studio head with a clever idea for a Crimson Skies or Shadowrun revival, feel free to give Weisman a call. Like, now.[Via VideoGamer]
SXSW 2009: 'Funologists' and unorthodox research methods
In the panel "Funologists Live & In Person: Guerrilla Game Research," a group of experts took turns explaining methods for researching user experience in games that goes in some way beyond the normal focus groups and QA cycle. The often ad-hoc methods provide valuable data about gameplay at a fraction of the budget of most data gathering exercises. And sometimes they involve becoming a frog.
Crimson Skies may, one day, fly again
1UP posted a pretty interesting recap of one of the original Xbox's golden childen, Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge, what it was, what it ended up being and (most importantly) if we'll be seeing a sequel anytime soon. And before you get too excited, know that if a sequel were developed, it'd be a long, long while before we see it.Long story short, after High Road to Revenge was shipped, the team started to develop yet another Crimson Skies sequel before Microsoft decided to scrap the entire project and focus on other things. Later, through an interesting turn of circumstances, the Crimson Skies franchise was purchased by the ex-Microsoft employee founded company Smith & Tinker where it currently resides. A company who admittiedly loves the Crimson Skies franchise, but is currently busy with the Capcom published Dark Void.All said, Crimson Skies is in loving hands with Smith & Tinker, but a sequel isn't high priority right now. Though, they do leave the door open to developing more airplane funnery, admitting that they have "a lot of Crimson Skies fans around here, and if the stars aligned, it'd be something we'd definitely be willing to explore again." Our fingers are crossed.[Via Joystiq]
Crimson Skies return uncertain, Dark Void for now [update]
Update: Just for clarification, this is in no way a confirmation that a sequel to Crimson Skies is being entertained by Airtight or any other developer at this point, as much as we may wish it to be so. Jose Perez has not actually commented on any sort of timeframe for a potential sequel and has only said that Airtight is open to the idea of revisiting the franchise. Airtight is currently developing Dark Void, which may or may not be preventing the studio from working on a new Crimson Skies, or any other title for that matter. What follows is pure speculation.
Weisman licenses MechWarrior, Shadowrun, Crimson Skies rights back from MS (internet finally notices)
On October 15th, Smith & Tinker, Jordan Weisman's new venture-backed startup, announced the licensing of the "electronic entertainment" rights to a number of Weisman's creations back from Microsoft. The deal, apparently done quietly (and ages ago in web-time), puts franchises like MechWarrior, Shadowrun and Crimson Skies back in Weisman's hands. Previously, these properties were managed and developed by FASA, another Weisman credit, which was sold to Microsoft in 1999 and dissolved several months ago.With Microsoft suddenly short on internal development teams, the most action the FASA catalog has been seeing is a polite dusting off ever few months before being re-shelved. While Weisman and co. have yet to detail the projects, a job listing calling for online game expertise suggests MMOs could be in the works. A posting on the Smith & Tinker website assures fans that "our goal is to surprise and delight old fans, while welcoming new fans to these fantastic worlds."[Via Gamasutra]
GWF: Dream Theater plays Crimson Skies
Progressive rock band Dream Theater will be taking combat to the skies this week as they're scheduled for some Game with Fame old-school Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge style. From 5-7:00PM eastern this Wednesday, December 5th the entire Dream Theater crew will be on Xbox Live supporting the new Xbox Originals download service playing Crimson Skies multiplayer and possibly some other games too. Make the jump for complete details, band gamertags, send off a few friend requests and play Wednesday night. Crimson Skies and Dream Theater, it's like chocolate and peanut butter ... or something like that.
Fall Xbox 360 dashboard update revealed: download Halo December 2
Official Xbox Magazine has the scoop on the Fall Xbox 360 dashboard update, and you better believe it's a doozy. UK-based CVG reports that the December 2 update will allow 360 owners to download and play Microsoft-published Xbox 1 games on their 360s. Let's say that one more time: come December 2, you will be able to download full, original Xbox games to the Xbox 360. The initial list of available games includes Fable, Indigo Prophecy, Crimson Skies: High Road To Revenge, Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath Of Cortex, Burnout 3, and, of course, Halo: Combat Evolved. Games will cost approximately 1200 Microsoft Points, or $15 USD. Microsoft plans on re-releasing as many Xbox 1 titles as possible through Marketplace. Look out, Virtual Console. Update: The CVG source has been removed, but Eurogamer has posted a similar report, dating the update for December 4th.
Rumor: Crimson Skies sequel incoming
OXM's April issue has an article entitled "The 5 Biggest Games Coming to Xbox 360 That 'The Man' Doesn't Want You to Know About Yet" that has some interesting tidbits about Crimson Skies. Apparently a sharp-eyed reader (or sly tip-off artist) noticed that the company website for Airtight Games lists a lot of ex-Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge developers on their site in the bio section, and they are pretty upfront about touting the fact that they are working on a major, unannounced game.Couple that with some of their PhysX demonstration videos, and it looks like they're probably working on a sequel to High Road to Revenge. Although the Xbox title didn't sell too well, we had tons of fun playing both the single-player and online multiplayer versions of this. The whole alternate history of the United States and the swashbuckling attitude made it fun, and those flying physics were pretty darn cool, even way back then in, er ... 2003.[Update: Appended a more explicit headline!][Via Xbox 360 Fanboy]
Crimson Skies may fly high again
In the April issue of OXM the Rumor Mole speculates about a sequel to semi-breakout hit Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge. The rumor fueling evidence on a sequel comes straight from developer Airtight Games' website. Their website lists numerous ex-Crimson Skies employees under their company bios section and also shows off prototype images/videos that include objects eerily familiar to the Crimson Skies world. Need more proof? Under Airtight's current projects section they say that they are "working with one of the industry's leading publishers on a major unannounced title". Suspicious we say. Suspicious.True or not, there is definitely a possibility that a Crimson Skies sequel in the works. But even if the game is in development we aren't expecting to see this game releasing anytime soon. So, anyone up for a little high flying sequel?[Via GameFaqs, Thanks SeNiLe911]
