PS3 Fanboy

Remember when Phil Harrison left Sony Worldwide Studios to join Atari? He was replaced by Shuhei Yoshida, a man who finally steps forth for an interview and, among other things, tells us why games like Eight Days and The Getaway got the axe. He first describes the state of the consoles pretty well: each console is going for a different target market and are actually working together to expand the gaming market as a whole.

Online technology and the PlayStation Network are the big pushes, Yoshida says. LittleBigPlanet, SingStar, and Buzz! are all going to push online tech with the PS3 in new ways. This was partly why Eight Days and The Getaway were canceled -- no real online components. There's a shift away from big-budget single-player experiences and more towards online functionality. Not that you can't have both; but only single-player? Unless it's a huge name, it probably won't fly. Yoshida seems to have his head on straight. Let's hope he can help forge a bright future for Sony!

In another Sony announcement made today, it appears that two games being developed by the internal London studios have now been potentially canned. The Getaway and Eight Days are now out of production, thanks to budgetary redistribution. Gamesindustry.biz have the full statement from Sony, in which they state that "this decision was made following an internal review of all games and it was deemed that with the incredibly strong list of exclusive first party titles coming up both this year and in the near future, resource should be reallocated to enhance those projects closer to completion."

It's thought that this is a direct result of Phil Harrison's successor, Shuhei Yoshida, becoming President of Sony's Worldwide Studios. We heard relatively recently from The Getaway's lead writer that the game was still in production and UK newspaper The Guardian had a recent article claiming Eight Days was ramping up to full production, so it's disheartening to hear that the projects have been canned.

[UPDATE] CVG states that "A Sony UK representative assured CVG that both titles had been "completely cancelled", and so will not be rescued from the bin at a later date."

You know what they say; no news is good news. That is, unless you're talking about video games. We haven't heard about The Getaway 3 since E3 2006 almost two years ago. Two years without news usually means the project has been cancelled. Thankfully, that's not the case this time as an interview with the game's writer, Katie Ellwood, has been published today on the British website Den Of Geek. In it Ellwood confirms that not only is The Getaway 3 still in production, but there's a possibility of a movie too.

"We are certainly talking to production houses about a movie for the third game in the Getaway series. The story and game script for this one is very exciting, as is the writer we have on board." says Ellwood. "I'm afraid I can't give any further information, other than to say: watch this space." Watch this space? We certainly will be.

Gallery: The Getaway

It's been over two years since we've heard anything about Eight Days and The Getaway 3. We just saw a video of them way back when the PS3 was trying to find its legs. It seems the website LusoPlay has stumbled upon some information about the games, however, and it may or may not be true we'll see some information on both in the coming month.

Says a poorly translated LusoPlay: "We know that the month of November will be the month of all revelations, and even prepared a small event for these two games." So if Sony has prepared a small event, we should be hearing something pretty soon, right? As far as we know, there's nothing planned in November besides the Great Influx of Games (GIG for those with an acronym fetish). Still, we don't know everything. We'll file this under the big ol' rumor section for now.

[via PS3Forums]