Square Enix

Don’t Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

Martyn Zachary 1 Comment

United Front Games, best known for their atmospheric Hong Kong city brawler Sleeping Dogs (2012), is rumoured to be closing down.

The weight of this rumour is not slight, and deserves all the extra attention we can bring to it – true or not, at this point in time we don’t yet know for sure – because, once again, the string of events that led us here reads like yet another example of Konami-like profound executive failure.

sleeping-dogs-definitive-edition-1920x1080

But, to start from a beginning. According to United Front producer Dan Sochan, Sleeping Dogs – which never quite lived down its reputation as a True Crime game – actually started out as the original game Black Lotus, which was then subsequently bought and slated by Activision to be the next part of their True Crime game series as True Crime: Hong Kong. After the publisher lost faith in the game’s market prospects, with Activision’s Eric Hirshberg noting in 2011 that “The finished product was not going to be at the top of that genre,” 1)https://www.engadget.com/2011/08/01/square-enix-snags-rights-to-true-crime-hong-kong-from-activisio/ it was ultimately poached (sans the True Crime moniker) from Activision by Square Enix, who would then release the game as Sleeping Dogs in 2012. 2)https://www.engadget.com/2012/06/06/the-true-story-of-sleeping-dogs-non-true-crime-origins/ (more…)

References   [ + ]

Read More

Revolutionary Title, Devolutionary PR

Martyn Zachary Leave a comment

Square Enix Ltd recently grabbed the trademark name “Deus Ex: Human Revolution” (008862153) for decidedly game-y purposes; should the forthcoming Deus Ex 3 be subtitled as such remains unconfirmed, though, but at the time of writing, that’s as close as it gets.

The company has also started an underground advertising campaign for the game – one that might not reflect as well on the game’s profile as they might have hoped, for reasons that are rather out of the company’s hands: While Valve is going all out and wooing the games press with massive high-profile PR stunts like there was no tomorrow, all we got from Eidos was these lousy renders:

Then again, it seems almost cruel to expect the same level of commitment as we do from Valve at this point, so… in case you’re stoked to see these images, you should keep on checking out the official thread in the Eidos forums.

In the meantime, do check out our Deus Ex 3 teaser trailer image gallery which contains full captioned explanations for each subliminal image present in the trailer (It was a lot of work).

Read More

Square Enix Offers to Buy Eidos

Nabeel Burney Leave a comment

Japanese giant Square Enix has made a buyout bid for Eidos, for $120 million – a 129% premium over the worth of the latter company’s stock. Eidos has been the subject of buyout rumours for some time now, with its rocky financial state over the last few years. The buyout is likely to go ahead, and what effect this will have on the development of Deus Ex 3 remains to be seen.

Read More