Rockstar Leeds tired of ports, working on new IP
The latest issue of Develop Magazine features an interview with Rockstar Leeds studio head Gordon Hall, who professes a desire to move on from portable ports – his studio was responsible for the PSP ports of Rockstar staples like Midnight Club, and The Warriors as well as two portable Grand Theft Auto titles – and develop their own new-gen IP. Hall said, "We're going to be branching out further into next-gen - we've done original work on an existing franchise, but now we want to work on new IPs, and are looking at what we can do on Xbox 360 and PS3."
Hall's team – who previously worked on mostly GBA titles as Mobius Entertainment before being acquired by Rockstar in 2004 – has been relegated to the handheld "ghetto" for some time. Current development on ports of Bully and Table Tennis for the Xbox 360 and Wii platforms should be decent practice for their next project, of which Hall says, "... it's a short development cycle, just 18 months, and it really excites me." An 18-month dev cycle? Maybe something for XBLA and PlayStation Network, then? And what about a San Andreas Stories game? And what's with all the questions?
