Outside of its 2004 EyeToy: Anti-Grav hoverboard title for Sony, Harmonix hasn’t veered far off its goals to bring music to the people. But looking forward, that could change, CEO Alex Rigopulos told us in a recent interview.

“I see Harmonix potentially evolving past exclusively focusing on music games,” he stated of the studio’s future. “That’s been — for our entire history — our reason for being basically. We’ve been focused on interactive music since the company started; we’ve been focused on music games for over 10 years now.”

While Rigopulos wouldn’t go into details, he does confirm (unsurprisingly) we’re “unlikely” to see Harmonix’s take on the first-person shooter. Motion gaming, however, will likely be the creative catalyst for such projects.

“We’re incredibly creatively motivated by motion gaming,” he states. “Of course, dance games are a special intersection of music games with motion gaming. Harmonix has developed a competency and quite a passion and interest, generally talking, in the area of motion gaming. So I think one of the things that you might see coming out of Harmonix in the future is more activity in the area of motion games.”

For more with Alex Rigopulos, including the potential for future “reinvention” of the Rock Band franchise, check our full interview.

source Destructoid

Oh look, it’s a multiplayer trailer for Conduit 2! This video gives you a taste of the twelve-person on the web combat, not to mention the four-player splitscreen mode. This is definitely looking like the ideal on the internet first-person-shooter on the Wii … and I almost made myself laugh typing that.

The Daily Mail (Britain’s answer to utter shit) is a predictable beast. As soon as Ubisoft announced its twelve-rated “sexy” party game We Dare, it was a given that the “news” outlet would jump all over it — and it has.

“A new ‘sexy party’ computer game has outraged parents with lurid adult content which they claim will encourage orgies and under-age sex,” says the Mail, failing to mention that it was probably the one to show these parents the game. “The Nintendo Wii game We Dare has styled itself ‘sexy’ but has only been given a 12+ rating.

Sonic the Hedgehog brand manager Ken Balough has confirmed that Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 2 is in the early stages of development, but unlike with Half-Life, we won’t have to wait years for it. He also promised it would address concerns from the first episode.

“Episode II is in early development now,” he said. “We already had some ideas fleshed out on development for Episode I in fact. No, you definitely wont have to wait years and years a la Duke Nukem Forever.

“I certainly cannot deny there were some elements that could have been done better — and I could state that about most games I’ve worked on. That’s why Episode II gives us that opportunity to address them (or as much as possible).”

He also confirmed that Episode 1 was a commercial success for SEGA, allowing for a potentially larger budget in Episode 2. Looks like, as predicted, the whiners who were ready to shit all over the game purchased it anyway. Principles — gamers have none.

Sonic 4: Episode 2 Confirmed, In Early Stages of Development [The Sonic Stadium]

source Destructoid

With all the WiiWare games that have mysteriously disappeared or have been outright canceled over the past year or so, I figured that we might never see La-Mulana hit Nintendo’s struggling service. Looks like I was wrong about that, as the team at Nigoro has just announced that they’re resubmitting the game to Nintendo for approval “in a few days”. I really hope it goes through, as the game has been on my personal “most anticipated” list for a while.

To celebrate this event, the guys at Nigoro will be doing a live stream of the game tonight at 10pm PST. They’ve also released a few new screenshots. Looks like the game definitely has its share of “Mickey Mouse Vs. The Terminator” moments. The battles against a giant eyeball and huge boobed goat demon are especially true to that “cute-meets-horrific” concept.

Looks pretty awesome to me. What do you think?

La-Mulana’s final code heading to Nintendo soon [ExtraGuy]

source Destructoid

Nintendo designer Shigeru Miyamoto has stated that he wants Mii characters to become the global standard for avatar creation and find their way into everything like some terrible, cute disease.

The Bit.Trip series came to a close on Friday with the release of Bit.Trip FLUX in Europe. I’m sad to see to the series come to an end, but I’m also excited to see what Gaijin Games and their subsidiary Robotube games will come up with next.

Maybe this collection of Bit.Trip concept art will give us some clues as to what their next project could be, like the very different version of Bit.Trip FATE seen above. It looks like in the original version of the game, it’s central gameplay hook, “the Fate line”, is absolutely missing. Instead you get a 2-player co-op shmup featuring two characters named “Parasite” and “Dominator”. As much as I love Bit.Trip FATE, I think I love the idea of this early version of FATE just as much. If this game each does come out, I absolutely have dibs on Dominator.

More concept art from the Bit.Trip series can be found at the link below. Some of them are new, some of them are old, but they’re all suitable for framing.

These Target Renders Reveal Gaijin’s BIT.TRIP Visions

source Destructoid