Friday 5 May 2006
Electronic Arts, creator of From Russia with Love, Agent Under Fire, GoldenEye: Rogue Agent and quite a few more 007 games, has ended its licence to produce Bond games three years early, with Call of Duty and Quake publisher Activision taking over the Bond brand.
EA had originally signed up to create titles featuring the suave super spy until 2009 but now the owners of the Bond brand, MGM Interactive and EON Productions, have gifted Activision the exclusive rights to 007 games until 2014.
And not only is the Tony Hawk and Spider-Man publisher free to work on titles based on forthcoming films, such as this autumn's Casino Royale, but also those plundered from the M16 man's past.
So far Activision hasn't revealed if it has any 007 titles in development, but that may be because - with 30 million Bond games sold since 007 first appeared on the Atari 2600 - it has had a little celebrating to do.
Stellar Blade director "grew up too poor to afford" a PS1, but when he finally got one in college, Ridge Racer and Final Fantasy inspired him to make games
Oh, that's why the Stellar Blade devs were terrified by demo players: one fan's spent "about 60 hours" maxing Eve's skill tree before the action RPG is even out
