Hilariously Arbitrary Waggle X-ercise! No, Ubisoft already did that one. Umm, how about Hillbilly Awareness Warrants Xenophobia? Harrowing Antagonistic Waffle Xtreme? Hygienically Attached Wailing Xylophone? Hobos Are Watching Xena? Please, somebody just tell us what Tom Clancy has to do with the Heinous Acronym We X-amined.
Why, thank you, IGN! It seems the first thing Ubisoft is doing with the wholly-purchased Tom Clancy is to put the man inside a high-tech jet and send him into High-Altitude Warfare ... X! Developed by the company's Bucharest studio, Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. places couch pilots in over 50 different planes equipped with an "Enhanced Reality System (ERS)," an optional means of alerting you to incoming missiles, tactical position and the activities of your AI squadron.
If you're wary of having robots for wingmen, you'll be pleased to note the game offers a 4-player co-op campaign and a 16-player Versus mode. Ubisoft hawks its airborne wares on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC this Fall.
Ubisoft's shares in Paris rose 12 percent this week, to 54.98 euros, after news that the publishing giant had bought the rights to Tom Clancy's brand name. According to Bloomberg, shares had previously fallen 29 percent this year.
The article also notes that Tom Clancy-based titles were responsible for 30 percent of Ubisoft's profit in the fiscal year ending March 2007. As part of the deal, Ubisoft has the rights to use Clancy's name and intellectual property for video games and related merchandising. After the reported Clancy MMO, here's hoping for a Tom Clancy party game where Jack Ryan takes on the Raving Rabbids.
Publisher Ubisoft sealed a mega-deal today for the rights to the Tom Clancy brand name to "use in video games and ancillary products including related books, movies and merchandising products." No price tag was affixed publicly to the deal, but Newsweek spoke with Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter who guesses it was somewhere around $100 million.
GameDaily reports that in a follow up conference call to the announcement, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot stated the company is looking to make a Tom Clancy MMO. Guillemot also guessed the MMO would cost around $50 million to make. Yes, but will it have the prerequisite elves and dwarves in there to become a phenomenon?
Read -- Ubisoft Locks Up All Tom Clancy Rights, Plans for MMO Read -- Newsweek talks to Pachter
Well, there's good news and there's bad news. The good? You're about to see a boatload of footage from upcoming RTS Tom Clancy's EndWar. The bad? The Frag Dolls are the ones doing the demonstrating. Let's talk gameplay first. In our opinion, the graphics are solid but the UI looks a bit jumbled. Of course, that's usually the way with an RTS until you know what's going on.
Thanks to the game's voice command, just the sound of the Frag Dolls' voices is enough to make troops start shooting people (a reaction we completely sympathize with). We can't decide if our favorite moment is when the blonde one (Scary Spice?) punches a fist in the air and gleefully shouts "World War 3!" or when she punches lower and gleefully shouts "Yeah! Weapons of mass destruction!" In truth our favorite part is after the video when you the viewer get to hear what the Ubisoft-employed Frag Dolls think of the game. (Spoiler alert: They love it.)
Congratulations, you did it! Why are we heaping our praise upon you for no good reason? Well, friend, you just joined Comcast's Elite Rainbow Six Bravo team. We don't know how you got the honor or why, but we know all you have to do is click this link to be automatically on the crew. For your trouble, you'll get the pride of knowing you're part of something bigger than yourself ... oh, and a free Rainbow Six Vegas 2 map.
The new map is called "Comcast Event" which is uncomfortably close to (read: is) super-blatant in-game advertising. But also, it's free, which makes it pretty tough to take a moral stand against. Enjoy.
Don't expect a Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas 3 anytime soon. Speaking to Eurogamer, designer Philippe Therien said, "We will never go back to Vegas - at least, not in the foreseeable future." So much for the "rescue four hooker witnesses from a back alley full of out-of-town drunkards" mission we've been dying to play.
Therien also noted that, although the single location worked well for the story of the previous two games, he's not sure if they'll return to that format for the next Rainbow Six installment. (Make no mistake, no one expects this to be the last Rainbow Six title.) The glamorous, time-paradoxicalRainbow Six: Vegas 2 is due out March 21.
Eurogamer reports that Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 2 will be shooting up casinos and terrorists before you know it, as Ubisoft has confirmed a March 21st release date for the game.
Vegas 2 will feature numerous improvements over the first Nevada-centric Rainbow Sixgame, including an improved reward system, online co-op, sprinting, and destructible cover. We're assuming March 21 is a worldwide release for the game, although we will confirm with Ubisoft whether that date pertains to North America as well as Europe.
"Talk to the hand!" has been the sentiment of thetwoRainbow Six Vegas 2 teaser trailers released thus far, and while Ubisoft still isn't ready to show us the game, the publisher is ready to talk. A smattering of gameplay details was disclosed today, confirming what the game title already reveals: we're in for more Rainbow Six Vegas. More weapons, more armor, mo' better AI, more multiplayer and, of course, "more Vegas."
As the Tom Clancy franchises continue along the 'EA Sports trajectory,' Vegas 2 will see its most ambitious seasonal tweaks in the form of improved "vastly improved" co-op play (a jump-in/jump-out campaign) and single-player expansion of the first game's multiplayer progression system (offline experience points). Anyone else convinced that the Ubisoft Montreal devs could code this game in their sleep?
Rainbow Six Vegas 2 is being developed for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Games for Windows, and is currently scheduled for a March 2008 release.
Perhaps to replace its last embarrassing trailer, Ubisoft has unveiled a new teaser for Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 2. This teaser offers even less of the game than Duke Nukem Forever'srecent sighting, opting instead to show a few seconds of operatives hopping out of a helicopter.
There is one pesky problem, and that is with time itself: if you notice the first shot of the helicopter it displays 6:52:12 and the chopper isn't close to the building. When the camera cuts back to the helicopter next to the building, time is again 6:52:12. There are two (and only two) logical conclusions: either we are to assume two helicopters, with shots from two separate buildings, or Vegas 2 has a time travel component. Hopefully Ubisoft will come clean on its temporal experiments sometime in the near-distant past-future.
If you're wondering what Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 2 will look like in-game, close your eyes and wish really hard for a new trailer. However, if you want to see what operatives do when not scaling walls or killing people (hint: it involves bountiful, big-breasted, brunette bimbos bumped briskly by brazen bodies), boy do we have a teaser for you.
The original video was posted and later pulled by GameTrailers, only to be re-uploaded to the site via a user -- if the video is pulled again, you can also find a copy at DailyMotion (via Megatonik). Other facts: it's still in Las Vegas and that's the logo above. Did you want to know anything else? Don't be so greedy!
After last week's report of Haze being on track for a December release, we're now prompted to point out the rather abrupt appearance of a detour in-between the metaphorical train and its final stop at the PlayStation 3. It seems the designers at Free Radical didn't receive nearly enough coal to reach the lead platform in time for Christmas, and now hope that you'll conduct your purchase of their first-person shooter in the first quarter of 2008.
Thankfully devoid of increasingly insufferable train puns, a Gamasutra article details the delay mentioned within Ubisoft's favorable first-half financial results. Sales for le publisher rose by 52% to $372.86 million, with profits jumping up 12% to $44.8 million. You might consider the money already spent on Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 2, expected to arrive in the same quarter as Haze. Not much is known about the sequel, save that it'll (probably) feature soldier-types shooting up evil, one-armed bandits.
Fellow Tom Clancy property, Splinter Cell: Conviction continues to be wishy-washy about a potential release date, as it's also been pushed back to Ubisoft's fiscal year 2008-2009.
