Aliens-Colonial-Marines posts

A few days ago we reported that a post on the NeoGAF message board made the claim that the the new print issue of EGM magazine indicated that the long-in-development first person shooter Aliens Colonial Marines would not be released by the end of 2011. Now Randy Pitchford, the head of the game's developer Gearbox Software, is denying that statement was indeed made.

In a Eurogamer post Pitchford said, "It looks to me like whomever made that post on NeoGAF made an interpretation that could be misleading or inaccurate." He added, "I am looking forward to talking more about Aliens: Colonial Marines very soon so that speculation and arbitrariness can be replaced with tangible, reliable and accurate information."

While there's been some recent indications that there would be more info announced soon on Aliens Colonial Marines, the long awaited first person shooter doesn't look like it will make it for a 2011 release. A post on the NeoGAF message board states that the new print issue of EGM magazine says that according to an interview with Gearbox Software's Randy Pitchford, the game won't be released in 2011.

Just to recap, Gearbox was announced by publisher Sega as the developer for the Aliens game way back in December 2006. However aside from a cover story in Game Informer magazine a few years ago there's been little info on the game's progress. Gearbox's next major game release is, of course, Duke Nukem Forever which is due out sometime this year.

Aliens Colonial Marines is a game that's basically been gestating for a long time but it's looking like there will be some actual concrete news on this long awaited first person shooter soon-ish. The Sega fan site SegaBits has posted up a quote from the new Game Informer magazine where Alan Pritchard, the VP of sales and marketing at Sega West, states, "Colonial Marines is still on. We've been working closely with Gearbox (Software) behind the scenes, and we'll be able to tell you a lot about that in the next couple of months."

Just a recap: Sega announced plans for an Aliens first person shooter to be developed by Gearbox Software way back in 2006. However in 2008 rumors hit that the game was in danger of cancellation. Later Sega announced that it would publish an Aliens Vs Predator game ahead of Aliens Colonial Marines. The AVP game was in fact released earlier this year to solid sales. Most recently Gearbox head man Randy Pitchford stated in September that the developer and Sega were still committed to Aliens Colonial Marines, stating, "We're not going to let this dream die, it's going to happen."

While the relaunch of Duke Nukem Forever by Gearbox Software was obviously the big news that the developer was promoting at PAX Prime 2010 this past weekend, Gearbox was also talking about a ton of other upcoming projects at its PAX Prime panel on Sunday. Our sister site Joystiq attended and got a mouthful of info.

Gearbox's most immediate project is the fourth DLC mini-expansion Claptrap's New Robot Revolution. However Gearbox also has plans for a free patch to the FPS-RPG hybrid that will raise the level cap to 69. That patch should be out in October around the time the Borderlands Game of the Year edition is scheduled to ship to stores.

And what about Aliens: Colonial Marines, the movie-based shooter that was announced way back in December 2006? Aside from a Game Informer cover story in early 2008 little has been show of that game. However Pitchford said he recently chatted with the head of Sega of America, the publisher of the game, and said that Sega was still committed to the title. Pitchford said, "We're not going to let this dream die, it's going to happen.

Brothers in Arms, Gearbox's original WWII tactical shooter series, is also alive and well at the developer. While nothing specific was announced, Gearbox hinted that it might take the series in some different directions with Pitchford saying, "We want to make sure we know we've got it right before we tell you what we're doing."

And finally, when asked about the unannounced game that is listed on Gearbox's own site as, "'look-at-our-line-up-and-imagine-something-even-bigger' kind of big", Pitchford answered, "That is not about Duke. That is one of the unannounced Gearbox projects." Interesting.

Earlier this month rumors hit the internet that Gearbox Software had taken over full development of Duke Nukem Forever from 3d Realms. At the time Gearbox's head man Randy Pitchford would not admit to the rumor but told Kotaku that more info would be revealed at PAX Prime 2010. Now the schedule for PAX Prime on September 3-5 reveals that Gearbox will be hosting a panel where it claims that it will be showing "never before seen footage of upcoming Gearbox releases."

The PAX Prime Gearbox panel description claims that it will have "juicy exclusives, surprising disclosures, unbelievable scoops and behind the scenes access" to Gearbox's future plans. At the moment we do know that Gearbox is prepping to release a fourth DLC mini-expansion for its 2009 shooter-RPG hybrid Borderlands. Gearbox's web site currently shows three unannounced games listed along with Aliens: Colonial Marines, a long-in-development shooter for publisher Sega that Gearbox has said little about for nearly two years.

Gearbox Software has been fairly quiet in the last few months. The developer of 2009's sleeper first person shooter-RPG hit Borderlands is apparently done with releasing downloadable content for that game and their only other announced title, the long delayed shooter Aliens Colonial Marines, remains under a cone of silence.

However the company's official web site shows that Gearbox has at least three other titles in some form of development. And they have been making the effort to trademark some titles. One of the titles listed under the US Patent and Trademark Office web site is for something called "Z-Day". While the title certainly invokes an image of a zombie-themed war game it could mean, well, anything. We just hope Gearbox lets the world know what they have been up to fairly soon.

[Via Siliconera]

With last month's successful launch (sales wise) of Aliens Vs Predator, will we be seeing more of that long delayed Aliens: Colonial Marines? It seems the answer to that question may be, "Yes." MCV chatted with Randy Pitchford of the game's developer Gearbox Software who said, "It's the thing I've been stealing from all my career. Now I'm really working on it, but we've been quiet about that so far."

It's hard to believe but Gearbox's involvement in an Aliens-based first person shooter was first revealed over three years ago. Publisher Sega seemed to want the game to come out last year but unexpectedly the company changed their minds and decided an Aliens Vs Predator game with developer Rebellion was worth doing instead. Since then Gearbox's FPS Borderlands has become a big hit so hopefully this means more dev time will be devoted to the new Aliens game.

It's looking like preliminary sales of Aliens Vs Predator have been pretty solid. As we reported earlier today the first person shooter from developer Rebellion was the best sellling PC title on Steam last week. The game also topped the sales lists in the UK last week. Reviews of the game have been a little mixed but most are favorable.

Rebellion CEO Jason Kingsley told the Develop web site that the studio is happy with the sales success although he did admit, "We've had three totally s*** reviews by some Americans, which is a bit odd. Some of them were inexcusably bad. If you discount those poor reviews AvP is averaging high for us." And it looks like things are looking good for some kind of follow up with Kingsley saying, "We're also in discussions with (publisher) Sega about ongoing support for AvP, and also about a sequel to the game."

Of course, Sega already has one announced Aliens game in the works; Gearbox Software's long delayed shooter Aliens: Colonial Marines. Hopefully the high sales of Aliens Vs Predator will also get Gearbox's project back in high gear.

We've reported in the past on the rather sad fate of Obsidian Entertainment's now canceled plans for an RPG based on the Aliens movie franchise. However, there's never been any gameplay footage on what that discontinued game actually looked like. Now a new YouTube video claims to show some in-game footage from that title.

The (extremely dark) video shows a little item gathering and some combat with aliens in the franchise's typical industrial steel corridors. Combat was apparently designed to happen in real time with an over-the-shoulder third person viewpoint. If this is a fake video it's an extremely good one and if not we wish we could have had a chance to see Obsidian complete this project.

Last week we did an extensive look at all of the big PC game titles that are currently scheduled for release this year (at least that's the plan; release dates can and likely will change for many of those titles). But there are also many games that have already been announced are not on our 2010 list. The reason? We just don't think they will ship out before the year is over.

However that's no reason to at least hope against hope. We decided to pick 10 previously announced games that we don't think will be released in the next 12 months but we do wish would make it. Of course, one or two of the titles on this list may actually surprise us and come out by the end of 2010. But at the moment the odds don't look good. By the way, we picked 10 games that are all officially announced. We could add a ton of other games that we know are in development but are not yet ready to become public (Blizzard's next-gen MMO, the next Infinity Ward game, etc) but that's a much longer list that we will get to later.

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