Jaffe Explains How Heartland Crashed And Burned

Sure, we heard the gory story details of David Jaffe and Incognito's canceled PSP game Heartland about this time last year. The super emo tale of a Chinese invasion of U.S. soil was said to rip our hearts out. In a fun way! You know, in a burning a Chinese-American family alive way, according to new revelations about the nixed game in the latest Escapist.

Jaffe explains how Heartland came to be and came to not be, as the game was a bad fit with the Warhawk developer from the get go. The intended follow up to God of War was planned as an emotional response to the Bush administration, but at the core, Jaffe says "what we really wanted to do was create the definitive shooter for the PlayStation Portable." That, obviously, didn't happen, and it doesn't sound like it ever will.

Inside David Jaffe's Heartland [The Escapist]

Warhawk Expansion Pegged For April

We just released an expansion on Warhawk in September, and we'll release another one in April.

How Warhawk Makes Home Really, Really Cool

Sure, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune and Resistance: Fall of Man may have wicked cool feature sets for PlayStation 3's Home, but it's actually Warhawk's planned game portal that has us most excited. According to our sources, the Home lobby for the Incognito dogfighter will serve as a "war room" where up to eight players can meet to discuss their strategy for an upcoming match.

Sure, you could do that with text or voice chat, but it sounds like the developers have gone the extra mile to make planning your battles even cooler.

I've had a pet project I've been working on for years, three of them if my memory is right. It started as a simple idea: You can judge a lot from a person's desk. I bet you could judge just as much from their home entertainment system. So I decided it would be fun to try and track down some pictures from the work desks and home gaming set-ups of the people who work in and cover the video game industry. Simple right? Not so much.

Turns out that many of the people are either too busy or too private to want to participate in such a project. To make matters worse, there's always fear that something sitting on someone's desk, that ends up in a photo, could actually be news worthy. Like a secret project or the next big thing. But I didn't give up and about once a year I'd harass a bunch of game developers for photos. Finally, this year, the harassment paid off.

What started as a trickle of photos turned quickly into the collection of galleries you'll find on the jump: More than 40 different photo galleries from 17 studios, seven publications, two industry movers and shakers and a couple of fun surprises.

You'll get to see the desk of such greats as Sid Meier, Peter Molyneux and Tetsuya Mizuguchi along with plenty of others. Remember you can comment both on the next page and on each individual photo if you click on them.

If I find there is interest, I will try to periodically update this gallery of galleries with more developers, journalists and industry movers and shakers. Have fun.

The rumored Warhawk expansion pack is rumor no more, with Sony mouthpiece ThreeSpeech confirming Operation: Omega Dawn will hit the PlayStation Network sometime this December. Doesn't sound exactly stuffed with content, maybe more along the lines of a simple add-on pack, as it features a new vehicle, the KT-424 Combat Dropship, and a new battlefield, the Omega Factory. Still, night time based battles sound very intellectually seductive. And I'm not even sure quite what that means.

More details and poor grammar choices at ThreeSpeech.

WARHAWK EXPANSION PACK SOON COME! [ThreeSpeech]

Jaffe's Big News

SCEA today confirmed what we reported yesterday: The company has signed an exclusive game development deal with a new studio formed by David Jaffe and Scott Campbell. Their first Playstation game will be released in 2008.

Jaffe, the developer of GOW and other games, and Campbell, founder of Incognito, formed Eat, Sleep, Play in Utah under the SCEA Santa Monica Studios banner. As part of their multi-year-multi-title deal the studio will be creating Twisted Metal(R): Head On for PlayStation 2, which is scheduled to be released this winter. Twisted Metal: Head On will feature lost levels from the never released Twisted Metal: Black(R) Part II and a documentary on the series.

"We are extremely pleased to be working with David and Scott and supporting them in their new endeavor," said Shuhei Yoshida, senior vice president, product development, SCEA. "Through hit after hit, they have established themselves as two of the most talented individuals this industry has ever seen, and I look forward to seeing what kind of further gaming innovation they can bring to the PlayStation brand through our new development deal."

Hmmm, I hope Jaffe has more light to shed on this news. I'd love to hear what the new studio's first big project will be. Release after the jump.

Sony Backing New Jaffe Studio

Updated: Jaffe *Not* Going Indie, *Not* Out Of SCEA

Warhawk Beta Invites Out (But Not For You)

Warhawk For Blu-ray AND PlayStation Network

GDC07: Warhawk Dev Hands Me My Balls

Warhawk Goes Multiplayer, Download Only (Really, This Time)

Clip: Calling All Cars! Gameplay

RUMOR: Warhawk For PS3 Goes Download Only

Blow Shit Up For Reals With Warhawk

Incognito Had 10 Days To Design Warhammer's Tilt-Sensitive Controls