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Konami says Sony made the call to drop 'PES 2019' from PS Plus freebies
Sony raised some eyebrows when it said Pro Evolution Soccer 2019 would no longer be a free game for PS Plus subscribers in July, with Detroit: Become Human Digital Deluxe Edition (which includes Heavy Rain) taking its place. But if you're wondering why the change occurred, statements from Sony and PES publisher Konami didn't shed too much light on the matter, beyond revealing who made the call.
Sony subs ‘PES' for 'Detroit' in July's PS Plus lineup
In an unusual move for Sony, it's making a change to its free PS Plus game lineup for July. It previously said the offerings would be Pro Evolution Soccer 2019 and Horizon Chase Turbo. Now, it's swapping out PES 2019 for Detroit: Become Human Digital Deluxe Edition, which includes another Quantic Dream game in Heavy Rain (a previous PS Plus giveaway).
'Detroit', 'Heavy Rain' and 'Beyond' will hit the Epic Games Store
Detroit: Become Human, Beyond: Two Souls and Heavy Rain are all making their way to PC for the first time in 2019 through the Epic Games Store. To date, the games have only been available on PlayStation 3 and/or PS4. The Quantic Dream titles are a bit of a coup for Epic as it takes aim at the likes of Steam, though Epic had plenty of other news about its store at GDC, including a Humble Bundle partnership and deals for upcoming games.
A Google-backed startup wants to change VR as we know it
What do you do when a good idea fails? You invest in a better version of it. We've known about Google's huge bet on startup Magic Leap for months, but a recent patent application explains why Mountain View has thrown over $540 million at an unknown entity. We don't know exactly what Magic Leap will offer, but by piecing together various patent applications we can surmise it relates to a wearable display system that will supposedly enable a super-realistic type of VR it calls "cinematic reality".
Revolution 60: All-female action adventure
What happens when a mostly female development team comes together to create an action-adventure game staffed entirely by female characters? Revolution 60 by Giant Spacekat (US$5.99/try-then-IAP-buy) happens. It's a touch-based iPad story-driven take on Heavy Rain and Mass Effect. You play Holiday, an assassin faced with a more morally complex landscape than you normally encounter in gaming titles. Should Holiday support her friends or fix her attention on the mission? It's a little bit transgressive, a little bit feminist. The stakes are high. I was particularly drawn to this title based on its feminine novelty. A mom to girls, I found the notion of a female actioner exciting. Although the reality was a little more boobs-and-bullets than can-do girl-power, I found Revolution 60 entertaining and well made. The acoustics of the game are superb. iOS has a bit of a bad rep for users switching off sounds. Do that in Revolution 60 and you'll be missing out on one of the game's highlights -- a well designed audio system that really brings the game to life. It helps you feel the experience as well as see it. The character graphics are really well done, built with full facial animation using the Unreal engine. Holiday's hair swings around as she walks, and her interaction with her world feels solid and multi-dimensional. The sets are nicely detailed, if a bit generically textured, and you feel immersed in an exciting drama. Where the game fell flat for me was its combat system. Admittedly, I played on the easiest level in order to progress as quickly as possible. The touch-based fighting felt tedious and I never really enjoyed those moments. However, the strength of the story outside of the combat kept me invested in following through with the adventure. The novelty of building emotional connections with characters provided the best part of the experience. The game offers excellent replay as your choices drive the story. Revolution 60 (iTunes link is not yet live) will be released on July 24th. You can try the basic game for free. A single in-app purchase of $5.99 unlocks the the full title. Giant Spacekat will also sell a companion book, "Revolution 60: The Chessboard Lethologica" in the iBooks store (iTunes link, not yet live, $3.99).
Minecraft PS3 update adds blocky skins from Uncharted, Heavy Rain, more
When the PlayStation Network is next updated, those playing Minecraft on the PlayStation 3 will find two new skin packs available for purchase. One features koalas and cavemen, while the other focuses on the most famous faces of the PlayStation 3. According to the PlayStation.blog, the Battle And Beasts skin pack will allow players to dress as koala bears, cavemen, an ocotopus or a particularly angular Cleopatra. The other pack, simply titled "Skin Pack 1", is aimed at "hardcore PlayStation fans" and features Minecraft versions of Uncharted lead Nathan Drake, larcenous raccoon Sly Cooper, "folks from Heavy Rain" and "some Killzone dudes." We'd like to be more specific on who exactly will be representing Heavy Rain and Killzone, but neither Sony nor Minecraft creator Mojang offer further clarification. Likewise lacking from the announcement are the price points that will be attached to those two DLC skin packs, though territorial Sony devotees will be pleased to hear that Skin Pack 1 is exclusive to the PlayStation 3 incarnation of Minecraft. [Image: Mojang]
Beyond, Heavy Rain creator David Cage loves games with 'soul'
Since he's answered so many questions about Beyond: Two Souls, and since the PS3 game comes out next week, I decided the time was right to ask Quantic Dream CEO David Cage about some other games. Specifically, the ones he admires and that emotionally affect him. "I love games where I can feel there is someone behind [it] ... whatever that means!" Cage said. "Sometimes you play [a game] and just feel like, 'Oh, this is just nice software developed by 200 people and it's nice, and the technology's great,' but there's no soul. And sometimes when you play a game you can feel the soul of someone behind it, and that's what I love. For me, Journey was something like this. For me, Papo & Yo was something like this. [In that game] there's really someone talking about these personal feelings that he experienced, and that's what I really love." Cage added that he tries to put soul into the games he makes; he's both the director and writer of Beyond: Two Souls, as he was for Quantic Dream's previous PS3 game, Heavy Rain. At a BAFTA lecture last month, Cage cited Journey, Papo & Yo, Rain, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, Gone Home, and The Unfinished Swan as representative of an indie community compensating for a lack of resources with creativity, and he's clearly a proponent of indie games. I asked him if there were any major games in which he saw a similar auteur quality to what he admired in Journey and Papo & Yo. "There are a couple," said Cage. "I think the games by Fumito Ueda. They are not indie games per se because they were produced by Sony, but there is definitely an auteur behind them, that's for sure. In Ico and Shadow of the Colossus you can feel there is someone with a soul behind them."
Beyond: Two Souls Video Preview
Spoiler alert: The video preview above contains a smattering of story scenes from Beyond: Two Souls, an upcoming PlayStation 3 game anchored by exquisite recreations of Ellen Page and Willem Dafoe. One of them drops an F-bomb too, so watch out for that. Director David Cage describes it as spiritual successor to Heavy Rain, polished to a Hollywood sheen and driven more by the events in the protagonist's life than a barrage of repeatable video game mechanisms. The primary source of intrigue in Beyond, and its most liberal form of interaction, is a disembodied character named Aiden. This supernatural entity is attached to Jodi, the protagonist played by Page, and allows the player to pass through walls, manipulate objects and temporarily possess unwitting bystanders. Beyond: Two Souls hits the big screen (in your house) on October 8, 2013.
Microsoft turned down opportunity to publish Heavy Rain, says Cage
PS3 thriller Heavy Rain could've been on Xbox 360, but long talks between Microsoft and developer Quantic Dream ended in disagreement and the French studio eventually turning to Sony, according to Quantic CEO David Cage. Speaking at a BAFTA UK event that Joystiq attended, Cage told the audience Microsoft had issues with the game's content, specifically child kidnapping. The 2010 game is based heavily around a father searching for his kidnapped son, taken away by a serial killer. When asked what he'd say to publishers who turned him down, Cage said Microsoft was the last to do so: "We were pitching Heavy Rain to different publishers, including Sony, and we went to Microsoft. We had a very long talk and they really loved Fahrenheit [known as Indigo Prophecy in North America], and they really wanted to do something with us. And they got scared by the fact Heavy Rain was about kids being kidnapped, and this is why they said, 'This is an issue, we want to change it." "Well, we could have kidnapped cats, That's a different experience!" Cage joked.
WRUP: Press X to Gamescom
It's been a busy, busy week of Gamescom. Thankfully, we found a way to take a break from all the action and find the ones we love so dearly. What's everyone playing?
Heavy Rain cost $52 million but made $130 million, you do the math
Heavy Rain cost developer Quantic Dream $21.8 million to make, and with Sony's marketing budget added in, production costs topped out at $52.2 million (based on a mid-range euro-dollar exchange rate of $1.31), Quantic CEO Guillaume de Fondaumiere tells Eurogamer. It was worth it in the end – Heavy Rain made Sony more than $130.6 million."It's very profitable," Fondaumiere says. Since there seems to be a wide discrepancy between the definition of "successful" in AAA and smaller games, it's always good to know that yes, more than $100 million is still "profitable" to some developers.
Heavy Rain composer Normand Corbeil passes away, aged 56
Normand Corbeil, the celebrated screen and video game composer, has died at age 56. Corbeil, twice nominated for Emmy awards for his work on Hitler: The Rise of Evil and Human Trafficking, composed the award-winning music of Quantic Dream's Heavy Rain. He also co-composed Indigo Prophecy, and was working on the studio's next project, Beyond: Two Souls. After being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in August 2012, Corbeil passed away on January 25.One of the key components of Heavy Rain, a game Joystiq doled out five stars to, was its powerful, often deeply melancholic music. As our reviewer put it, Corbeil's "superb" accompanying score drew you into the experience because it fit the situation so well.Our thoughts go out to his family, friends and colleagues. Gaming has lost a great composer, but Corbeil's work lives on, and we hope you take the time today to enjoy it.
Heavy Rain creators produce 'Kara' PS3 tech-demo (video)
Heavy Rain creator David Cage was showing off Quantic Dream's new game engine at GDC, which includes an innovative new performance-capture technology the company's developed. He's directed a seven-minute original short called Kara, which is the story of a female android as she becomes self-aware. Unlike traditional game production methods, this technology is able to record face and body movements at the same time as recording the actors voice -- ensuring natural and consistent performances from the characters. Actress Valorie Curry wore 90 sensors on her face, unlike in, say, Avatar, where the performers wore head-mounted cameras. Cage promises that the short is nothing more than a demo (it was rendered in real-time on a PlayStation 3) and none of these elements will appear in his next game. You can catch the impressive-looking footage after the break with one disclaimer: there's nudity throughout and a reference to adult themes, okay?
EU could lose tax breaks for game developers, threatens talent exodus
The European Union provides us a small-scale glimpse into the potential functions of a truly global society -- and more recently, a global society in crisis. The unified currency of the EU, the Euro, was on the brink of collapse recently and all of its member countries are still running damage control.Now, France in particular is facing another monetary hurdle, as its tax incentive for game development has expired and casued "genuine concern" the EU may not renew the exception that would reinstate it. State aid is normally forbidden under EU law, but in some cases it is allowed -- without an exception, game-development tax incentives would be banned in all EU countries, including France and the UK, Develop reports.French developer Quantic Dream (Heavy Rain) said that if the tax break is not reinstated it would relocate its operations to Canada, which does offer incentives for development companies, Develop adds. And according to TIGA, The UK's game-development workforce -- which sees no tax breaks -- fell 10 percent between 2008 and 2011, with 41 percent of its workers relocating overseas to countries such as Canada.
Editorial: 'I'm tired of saving the world'
Heavy Rain asks us "How far would you go to save someone you love?" Few games bother with this sort of question because the answer is intensely personal. Most games would rather task you with saving the world than with rocking a baby to sleep or patching up a failed relationship. This intransigence on the part of developers to create idiosyncratic stories that resonate with the individual is holding the medium back. Why should gaming's prime inspiration be Michael Bay instead of David Lynch, David Mamet, Paul Thomas Anderson, or even Mel Brooks? An interactive medium like this has the potential to tell complex stories in ways that are sublime, irreverent, and evocative. Gaming could explore the human condition by interfacing with the player like books, movies, and TV never could. Instead, we do battle with rogue Russian nationalists, storm Normandy for the 47th time, or fight off an alien invasion. I can't relate to any of this. I'm tired of saving the world, and the industry is belatedly coming to the same realization. My favorite games of 2011, L.A. Noire and Catherine, spent generous time on character development, with highly personal stories that resonate with the individual.
A third of Heavy Rain players kept all characters alive
Heavy Rain developer Quantic Dream recently shared some player statistics with IGN about its 2010 interactive drama. Of the 3 million players who reportedly played the game, 74 percent completed the game. Of those, 33 percent of people must have gotten the "four heroes" trophy, surviving home invasions, sinister scenarios and angry junkyard mechanics to keep the game's quartet of protagonists alive and kicking. Here's a good takeaway for game developers seeking to implement multiple endings for their games: only four percent of players have seen all Heavy Rain's endings and only three percent earned the game's platinum trophy. However, 100 percent of future developers should "press X to Jason."
Heavy Rain Director's Cut slated for November 8
Heavy Rain Director's Cut launches on November 8. In addition to scrapped content, the re-release also includes The Taxidermist DLC, the soundtrack, eight bonus making-of videos, a few themes, concept art and two trailers, PlayStation Blog reports. There's also a new front-end menu and UI with Move support. To celebrate the (re)launch, Sony's making the Heavy Rain Crime Scene Dynamic Theme available on PSN the same day. We're sure that'll fill the void in your heart left by the child you lost at the mall that one time. [Update: This post originally said the Director's Cut included the game's deleted scenes, which ... well, it doesn't. We apologize for the mistake, please don't drown us.]
Heavy Rain developer estimates $13M loss on second-hand sales
Quantic Dream co-founder Guillaume de Fondaumiere estimates the studio lost between €5 and €10 million ($6.8 and $13.7 million) worth of royalties on Heavy Rain because of used sales. "We basically sold to date approximately two million units, we know from the trophy system that probably more than three million people bought this game and played it," de Fondaumiere told GI.biz. "On my small level it's a million people playing my game without giving me one cent." The three million "bought" math sounds a little fuzzy, especially if one were to consider the rental market and friends borrowing games, but he seems to be on the right path. "Now are games too expensive?" de Fondaumiere continued, "I've always said that games are probably too expensive so there's probably a right level here to find, and we need to discuss this altogether and try to find a way to I would say reconcile consumer expectations, retail expectations, but also the expectations of the publisher and the developers to make this business a worthwhile business." We bet that's especially true when your game does better than your publisher ever expected.
Tamer version of Heavy Rain to be re-released in Europe [update]
PEGI, the European video games rating board, recently published an evaluation for Heavy Rain Edition Modifiée, an apparently toned-down version of Quantic Dream's interactive drama which will carry a PEGI 16 rating (marked down from the original's PEGI 18 rating). Little is known about the content or reasoning behind the new, minor-friendly version of the game, but as the PEGI rating mentions an August 3 release date, it'll probably start showing up on European store shelves soon. So, what's getting cut in the Edition Modifiée? According to the PEGI ratings, the original's "extreme violence" and "violence towards defenceless people" have been downgraded to "realistic-looking violence." We can't wait to see how this changes the game's more intense sequences. For instance, there's that one scene, during which you have five minutes to improvise a tool which you can use to cut your fingernails. Update: Looks like the tamer edition isn't releasing Europe-wide -- a Sony representative confirmed to Eurogamer that the new version "is just a small initiative for France only."
Canned Quantic Dream project 'Infraworld' trademarked by SCEE
Earlier this year, gaming industry sleuth Superannuation uncovered the possible monikers of two projects from Heavy Rain developer Quantic Dream. The first was Fiv5, which showed up in a domain and European trademark registered by the developer. The second was Infraworld, a project the studio canceled in 2006. It later showed up as a Heavy Rain Easter egg, as well as a Quantic Dream hire's LinkedIn profile. Today, the latter name showed even more signs of life when it surfaced in a U.S. trademark filed by Sony Computer Entertainment Europe this past May. If Infraworld has indeed been saved from the Quantic Dream cutting room floor, it's possible that it follows the same style of Heavy Rain -- in March, David Cage explained that he wanted to build on his treasured "Interactive Drama" genre. That's still a pretty broad set of expectations, though one thing's for sure: Bizarre and unplaceable accents are pretty much a lock.
