Xbox 360 group product manager Aaron Greenberg and reggaeton producer Nely

All work and no play makes the Level Up staff very dull boys indeed. So when we got word that our favorite Xbox kingpin Aaron "B.I.G. VIP" Greenberg was rolling through NYC, we agreed to jump in for a Friday night of debauchery good-natured fun. We kicked things off at an after work cocktail party at the offices of Kinetix Integrated Communications, a lifestyle marketing company that both Microsoft's Zune and Xbox divisions are employing to reach out to urban and Latino communities. According to Greenberg, the group product manager for Xbox 360's Live and lifestyle programs, a number of key influencers and media in the urban and Latino markets are still playing videogames on their PlayStation 2s. To remedy that situation, he spent the latter half of last week being driven from meeting to meeting in an SUV, taking Xbox 360 Elites out of the back of the vehicle and dropping them off with late-adopting gamers like a big city Santa Claus.

At Kinetix's Manhattan offices, we witnessed Greenberg dispensing post-holiday cheer to an influencer of particular note: reggaeton producer Nely "El Arma Secreta," the mastermind behind such hits as Wisin Y Yandel's "Rakata" and R. Kelly's "Burn It Up." The charming twentysomething studio wizard was pleased as punch to receive his Xbox 360 Elite. Why? All the better to put the hurt on opponents in his current favorite game, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. The rest of the night is a bit of a blur--tooling around the city after 11:30 PM trying to find a suitable restaurant for late night dining; Greenberg hollaticking with his Miami crew via cell phone; the de rigueur bottle service (Belvedere, of course) that accompanied the breaking of bread at Pop Burger in the Meatpacking district--but it was clear from our night on the town that Microsoft is sparing no expense in its broad-based pursuit of console dominance.

 The Tribe stage of Spore, developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts

The wait is almost over. The end is nearly in sight. Electronic Arts has just announced a release date for its eagerly anticipated game Spore, in which players work their way up the evolutionary ladder from single-celled organisms to space travelling powerhouses. On September 7th, 2008, the game will ship on Windows PCs, Macintoshes, DS and various mobile phones. No word yet on a ship date for the Wii version, or whether Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 will be able to join on the fun.

We've also conducted a pair of exclusive interviews with Maxis chief designer Will Wright and Spore executive producer Lucy Bradshaw. Wright gives us some detailed insight into why Spore has taken so long to develop; why social networking sites like Facebook and Flickr are serving as guiding lights for the finished product; an whether he's got anything left in the tank after pouring his all into the game that some people have referred to as SimEverything. Bradshaw, for her part, explains what's been involved in creating the Mac edition of Spore, along with never-before revealed details about the versions for DS and mobile phones. You won't want to miss either one.

To read Part I of our two-part interview with Will Wright, click here. For Part II, click here. For our Q&A with Lucy Bradshaw, click here.

For the full press release, click on the link below.

To see a larger version of this image, click here.

To see a larger version of this image, click here.

The one year anniversary of Level Up took place on September 25th. We meant to celebrate the occasion, much as we did our 100th posting, but truth be told, we were too busy bringing you the latest and greatest to waste time sending up fireworks or making it rain. Now that Newsweek.com is relaunching, however, we'll take a modest bow (thank you, thank you) before letting you know what features have been added to our humble blog.

The first and most important feature is comments. We had them at launch; unfortunately, when we switched to a new publishing tool, we lost them. Now they're back like the ghosts in "Poltergeist II: The Other Side," they're here to stay, and they should go a long way towards energizing what we hope will become a vibrant Level Up community. We welcome your opinions, questions and concerns; consider the comments your space to share your thoughts on videogames with us and the world at large. You'll have to register to comment, but it's a quick and painless process, so please take a moment to do so.

Beneath our other picture in the upper left-hand corner, you'll find a link to our email address. If there's something you'd like to say directly to us, go right ahead and do so. We love hot tips on as-yet-unbroken news, but you don't have to come bearing scoops in order to drop us a note--we want to hear from you. Looking at individual posts, you may notice that the categories no longer appear on top. We'd been using tags as rubrics for our stories, but we've temporarily lost that feature, as tags now only appear at the bottom of a post after you've clicked on it. We're told that this feature will be restored in a future iteration.

In the right-most column, beneath the big square advertisement, you'll see "Featured Postings." Here you can quickly access the three most recent Level Up posts we believe you won't want to miss. Finally, if you click on a post and scroll to the bottom, you'll see several handy features. You can adjust a slider bar to increase or decrease the size of the fonts on our blog. Also, at the click of a button, you can email print our posts; email them to friends, family and colleagues; add them to your RSS newsreader; or recommend them to social networks like Facebook, Digg, Sphere, Newsvine and Del.ico.us. It's been a long time coming, but we'd like to thank the folks at Newsweek.com and their partners for all of their hard work on the relaunch. As for you, our dear readers, we thank you for your support over the past 12 months, and we heartily welcome you aboard for the next 12 months and more.

What was your reaction to winning Best Action/Adventure game?

We've always won a ton of E3 awards for BioShock from the press, but we never picked up a judges' award before. So it was really gratifying.

BioShock has already gone gold. How have you celebrated this milestone in the past, and how did you celebrate this milestone for BioShock?

We just had a team party in Boston, and then we have a event on the launch night on August 20th, which we’re inviting lots of people to, including members of the BioShock fan community. I'm actually looking forward to that, because launches are usually such abstract things. You wake up launch morning and it’s like, "Hey, our game has, umm, shipped to retail!"  It’s not exactly like headlining at Madison Square Garden.

With BioShock already getting great reviews, and Harmonix's Rock Band receiving early accolades, 2007 looks like a breakout year for the Boston game development scene. Is there anything that distinguishes game development in Boston from that in other cities, and how much is the departed Looking Glass Studios responsible for laying the foundation for what we see today.

 

After the results of the Game Critics Awards were announced earlier this week, we reached out to several winners for their reactions and some updates about their games in progress. The big winner was Rock Band from Harmonix, which won three awards: Best of Show, Best Hardware/Peripheral and Best Social/Casual/Puzzle. We emailed some questions to Alex Rigopulos, CEO and co-founder of Harmonix. Here's what he wrote back:

What was your reaction to winning Best of Show, Best Hardware/Peripheral and Best Social/Casual/Puzzle?

As you can imagine, the team here was absolutely thrilled. When we got the news, we immediately and vigorously polished off several crates of champagne-which was a welcome relief from the stress of beta.

Now that we've sobered up again, there's this small matter of finishing the game...

A rhythm game has never won Best of Show from the Game Critics Association. Were you surprised to win given the history and your competition? What do you think this means for the music game category?

Yes, honestly, it was hard to believe, given the history, and also given the other incredible games that were nominated. I think it's a sign that music games have finally "arrived" in the U.S. and have taken their place as a major, mainstream category of games.

How close is Rock Band to completion, and what major things remain to be done?

All of the major systems are complete. As is normally the case in beta, there's plenty of bug-fixing to be done, finishing off of various details, and lots of play-testing, polishing and tuning. We're dying to cross the finish line and get this thing out into the world!

 

After the results of the Game Critics Awards were announced earlier this week, we reached out to several winners for their reactions and some updates about their games in progress. The winner of Best Original Game was LittleBigPlanet from Media Molecule. We emailed some questions to Alex Evans, technical director for Media Molecule. Here's what he had to say:

What was your reaction to winning Best Original Game?

Actually when we got the nominations it was another mad moment of disbelief & happiness that all the people we met at E3 understood the game vision so well. Our policy of basically trying to be as open as possible and show large amounts of the game hands-on, even really early in dev, is unusual but it's really paid off for us! So to actually win Best Original Game from the back of that--well, I don't think it's really sunk in fully yet. Especially against such a strong field this year. It's all awesome, and yet surreal.... :-) The team are totally stoked, and it gives us all new impetus to push forward and make LBP as fine a game as we can!

What was more special to you and why: the audience reaction at the 2007 Game Developers Conference, or the response from individual journalists at E3 2007 as they were playing the game?

They were extremely different. At GDC, it was a special moment just because that was when we burst into view, and the reaction was so wonderful and unexpectedly positive. But at E3 I felt we tackled a much harder and more interesting challenge--letting people (especially critical and knowledgeable gamers!) play the game, see if they had fun--and showing the create tools off for the first time. In a way that was revealing the most ambitious part of our project in a detailed hands-on way, so it's really great that everyone who has played seems to ‘get it'.

How far along is the game, and what are the major things left to be completed before it ships?

 

After the results of the Game Critics Awards were announced earlier this week, we reached out to several winners for their reactions and some updates about their games in progress. The winner of Best Console Game and Best Role-Playing Game was Mass Effect from BioWare. We emailed some questions to BioWare president Greg Zeschuk and chief executive officer Ray Muzyka. Here's what they told us:

What was your reaction to winning both Best Console Game and Best Role-Playing Game for Mass Effect?

Zeschuk: We are really thrilled and honored that we won both the Best Console Game and Best Role-Playing Game awards; there were some really stunning games at E3 this year and for Mass Effect to be on the top of the list tells us our team’s hard work is paying off. Going into the show is always a little daunting as the competition is extremely fierce, but Mass Effect being recognized by the key industry press really gives us a lot of confidence that we’re doing things right. We believe that Mass Effect will settle the “are games art?” argument once and for all… :-)

Mass Effect has gotten a lot of praise for its interactive dialogue and performances. What have been the biggest challenges in perfecting the games dialogue system?

Muzyka: Truly capturing deep, emotional engagement with the characters and the story in Mass Effect was the biggest challenge we faced while building the game at BioWare, but it was also one of the areas we focused on from the very beginning of development. We really started building toward this goal in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic where we did full voice over and lip sync combined with a great storyline in the game, and we extended it further with Jade Empire where we started adding emotional states in characters during dialogue. In Mass Effect we are not only giving players our best storyline yet, combined with the option of how they want to respond in real time during a conversation, but we’re also adding in an incredible level of subtlety and craft in how characters respond to your actions. As a result, the conversations look and sound incredibly real, so that no matter what dialogue choice a player makes, it feels entirely authentic, and exploration transitions to conversations and combat entirely seamlessly.

One of the things we heard after the E3 presentations and press playthroughs was that not only was it incredibly fun to play the game, but it was even fun to sit back and simply watch it being played. Mass Effect really feels like an interactive blockbuster movie where you, the player, are both the director and the lead actor in the story--and you also get to explore the galaxy in your own spaceship--need we say more?

How close is the game to completion, and what are the major things left to be finished before it ships?

Zeschuk: We’re getting very close to the end as we are committed to shipping in November; we are focusing on polishing the game to an extremely high standard. BioWare is known for quality, and we believe Mass Effect could be our best game yet. It is certainly the most amazing game we’ve ever made! Something that never seems to shock us is that we’re always discovering new things as we play it. We’d love to spoil it for you, but we want everyone to experience the amazing surprises in the game first-hand!

 

After the results of the Game Critics Awards were announced earlier this week, we reached out to several winners for their reactions and some updates about their games in progress. The winner of Best PC Game was Crysis from Crytek. We emailed some questions to Crytek president Cevat Yerli. Here's his reply:

What was your reaction to winning Best PC Game?

We were very, very happy. We understood what challenges we have and what concerns people express when talking about Crysis in regards to fidelity vs. [system] requirements. But I am glad that the level we showed from the game spoke volumes enough to help us win the award. It's a great reward and we'll use this as a stepping stone towards finishing Crysis. We are very happy with this on our shoulders now.

The game has always looked great, but what kind of specs will people need in order to run Crysis so that it looks as good as what you've shown publicly?

We are still working on finalizing our specifications; in fact, optimization is one of the things we're focusing on right now.  We still expect to meet our goal to make sure gamers will be able to get a great experience playing Crysis on gaming rigs 2-3 years old from the time we ship.  At the same time, we're thinking about the future and also making sure the Crysis still looks great 2-3 years from now, just like Far Cry, which still looks great on current state of the art hardware.

How far along is the game, and what are the major things left to be completed before it ships?

We are in the final stages right now. The Alpha is behind us, and we are about to finish our Beta stage. Some minor balancing, polishing, bugs and optimization are left. We are on track to release on November the 16th, 2007--a very exciting date for us! Cross your fingers please!

 

After the results of the Game Critics Awards were announced earlier this week, we reached out to several winners for their reactions and some updates about their games in progress. The winner of Best Handheld Game was The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass from Nintendo. We emailed some questions to Nintendo's Eiji Aonuma, manager/producer of Software Development Group No.3 in the company's Entertainment Analysis & Development Division. Here's what he told us:

What was your reaction to winning Best Handheld Game?

I was very grateful to learn that The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass has received the Best Handheld Game award, a few years after another handheld Zelda, Minish Cap, won the same award. As we were challenged to create something very different this time, I am particularly happy because the award appears to have meant that our challenge was worthwhile.

Why do you think Japanese gamers have responded so much more strongly to The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass for the DS than to The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess for the Wii?

The biggest factor must be that, in Japan, the gaming population has already been expanded. The sheer installment base of Nintendo DS is huge, far larger than that of Wii, and so many Japanese, regardless of gender, age and past game experiences, are now playing with Nintendo DS. We really wanted to make software that can be appreciated by the core gamers and casual gamers alike, and the sales so far appear to be showing that many Japanese are enjoying this new handheld Zelda.

What was the most challenging part of designing Link's controls around the stylus?

We wanted to create a new handheld Zelda experience that can be played only by touch pen so that novice players would not be hesitant in trying to play while core Zelda fans can find something very unique and fresh. Once we decided this basic play style, brand new ideas were hit upon by us developers one after another. The only challenge we faced was eliminating any and all ideas which made the gameplay too complicated or uncomfortable. In the end, we believe that we were able to create a brand new Zelda experience that can be very comfortably played only with a touch pen, and we are glad with the outcome. The core Zelda fans appeared to have some hesitation at the beginning, but after they started playing, we believe they understood the reason why we have chosen this new direction this time.

 

After the results of the Game Critics Awards were announced earlier this week, we reached out to several winners for their reactions and some updates about their games in progress. The winner of Best Racing Game was Burnout Paradise from Electronic Arts' Criterion Studios. We emailed some questions to Alex Ward, creative director of Criterion: Here's what he sent back, along with the exclusive screenshot shown above:

What was your reaction to winning Best Racing Game?

As ever, I speak on behalf on the development team and I can report that they are very pleased to win this award and very proud of the work we've done so far. It certainly hasn't been easy and we went into this E3 not quite knowing what to expect. There were some great titles nominated too, so let's not forget them.

How much of a challenge was it to set a racing game in an open world with increased destructibility and still maintain the Criterion standard of 60 frames per second?

It was enough of a challenge for us as a development team to throw away (or 'bin off' as we say) ALL of our old technology. That was absolutely everything we had. And that tech was FAST, world-class fast and I think everyone knew that.

Paradise has changed everything we've done and challenged us in every way possible. It's the first open world game we know of that runs at sixty [frames per second.] As I said to [Ziff-Davis editorial director] John Davison after the SCEA conference, to achieve this result in time for E3 was like us putting a man on Mars. Everyone else was shooting for the moon. Now there's nothing wrong with the moon, but everyone wants to move to Mars!

As I repeated a lot to people at E3, each Burnout game was a reflection of who we were at that time. And times change, and so do we. Just because we did something before doesn't mean we'll do it the same way again. Each Burnout game stands alone, both in technology and game direction.

With this new game we have to stream about five times as much world than ever before. This required us to totally rethink how we should approach building this world and changed our entire toolchain. I cannot tell you the shockwaves this sent through our team and our company. To just put ANYTHING onscreen meant going right back to square one. Right back. So we didn't want to just try and work smarter, we had to be smarter AND faster. And that's the real trick. We've set out to make a totally new gaming experience, not just an all-new Burnout experience.

In Paradise City, the player can now go anywhere, look in any direction, at any time. This means that we cannot precompute anything or chop anything out to maintain framerate - we don't control or restrict what the player does anymore. This is YOUR Burnout YOUR way. So has it been a challenge? Absolutely, but I'm incredibly proud to work alongside some of the best damn programmers in the world. And they LOVE a challenge.

How close is the game to completion, and what major aspects of the game's development remain?

 

After the results of the Game Critics Awards were announced earlier this week, we reached out to several winners for their reactions and some updates about their games in progress. The winner of the Special Commendation for Graphics was Killzone 2 from Guerrilla Games. We emailed some questions to Hermen Hulst, managing director of Guerrilla Games: Here's what he wrote back:

What was your reaction to winning the Special Commendation for Graphics?

The Special Commendation is quite an honor as we weren't playable at the show, which I understood to be a requirement. I am particularly pleased that the team nevertheless got the recognition from the jury.

Expectations for and skepticism about Killzone 2 were so high after the E3 2005 trailer. How confident were you going into E3 that your demo would deliver the goods. What was it like watching the reactions of first group of journalists at the Killzone 2 preview event, and when did you realize that you'd gotten them hooked on the demo?

The vision that we set for the game through the E3 2005 trailer was purposefully ambitious yet achievable. But even though we always believed we could live up to our own benchmark, after a while it becomes hard to judge your own stuff. For me it was clear that our game was going to make quite an impact when we demoed the game to [Playstation studio chief] Phil Harrison and some of the marketing folks a few weeks before E3 and their first response was "Wow...what a rush!"

The game looked great at E3. How much work is left to be done before launch, and when can we expect to hear some details about multiplayer?

At E3 we wanted to show that we can live up to the promise of the original trailer. As for the second part of the question, we plan to follow up with more information on the game as additional details become available.

Stranglehold Playstation 3 Special Edition box art

In emailing with Midway Home Entertainment senior vice president of marketing and chief marketing officer Steve Allison about the growing ties between Hollywood and the videogame industry, we were also curious about another Midway deal involving Stranglehold. The Playstation 3 Special Edition version of the game includes a copy of its inspiration, the 1992 John Woo film "Hard Boiled," stored on the same high-capacity Blu-Ray disc for $10 over the price of the regular version. How did this deal come about? Here is our exchange on the subject.

For years, companies like Disney and Sony have explained that the reason that they don't package the DVD of a movie with its videogame is that it's difficult to both get the fair market value for each and give consumers a bargain. How, then, did Midway put together the deal for the high-definition version of "Hard Boiled" that is being included as part of the PS3 special edition of John Woo's Stranglehold? Will the Stranglehold special edition be the only place consumers can get "Hard Boiled" on Blu-Ray, or will it be available elsewhere?

I think the days of this concern or rationale for not bringing our two forms of media together on special SKUs will be behind us now, especially with the storage capacity that new media like Blu-Ray allows. There's a tremendously powerful opportunity to bring content together that collectively makes for a much more powerful product when you do things like this. The argument you reference about "fair market value" kind of goes out the window especially on catalog movies that have been out on the market for a while. On newer DVD releases, I can see the issue when a home video division of a studio is dealing with a third party publisher. However, a strategic advantage held by studios like Disney or Warner Brothers who are taking on their own game publishing duties is to bring the newer film content together with the new game releases; it's up to them to figure out how to do the internal transactions between the divisions to make it all work. Having just done this deal with the Weinsteins for "Hard Boiled," I'm it certain it can be done; it's a matter of the studios deciding that it's important and doing it.

For us, it was a wild-haired idea at first: why not pair up a new videogame with a very good catalog film in the same genre if it holds some value to a consumer? Stranglehold continues the story of Inspector Tequila from "Hard Boiled," so tracking down the rights holder was super logical in the context of this "crazy idea," which is what everyone said when I first pitched it internally.

The Weinsteins and Genius Products, their home video partner, are very forward thinking on this issue, I have to say. We approached them not knowing their plans for their own re-release of "Hard Boiled" at the end of July. To protect them against worries of cannibalizing their release we did two things: