Resident Evil 5; id says bye to ESA; uPlay; Capcom Movies; Olympic Commities say no to Video Games

Since the original announcement of Resident Evil 5 nearly three years ago, the game’s release date has been shrouded in more mystery than the shady doings of the series’ nefarious Umbrella Corporation. However, Capcom has now shed a little light on the game’s release date in a business strategies presentation follow-up to its fiscal 2007 results, announced earlier this week. In a section on the publisher’s projections for its fiscal 2008 year (which runs until March 31, 2009), Capcom said it “aims to sustain solid growth by introducing Resident Evil 5 and titles in other core franchises.” The publisher broke down a few of its sales expectations, with the next installment in the survival horror franchise projected to sell 2.3 million copies worldwide. The upcoming Bionic Commando revamp is expected to sell 1.5 million units worldwide, while Lost Planet: Colonies’ success is pegged at 610,000 copies. Capcom also touted its Monster Hunter franchise, which is exceptionally popular in Japan. Monster Hunter Freedom 2G for the PlayStation Portable was launched in March, and the publisher expects the Asia-only release to rack up 1.5 million in sales in its first year on shelves.

More ill-tidings for E3 Media & Business Summit runners the Entertainment Software Association today. It has confirmed with id Software that it will not be renewing its membership with gaming-industry representative body the Entertainment Software Association. Following initial confusion over id’s E3 presence, the ESA revealed earlier this week by omission that id Software has yet to sign on to this year’s show, which runs July 15-17 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Earlier this month, long-time id Software publisher Activision and its soon-to-be merged partner Vivendi Games initiated the ESA exodus by revealing they would not be renewing their membership dues and had no intention of attending this year’s show. Activision Blizzard were then followed out the door by LucasArts, though the Star Wars: The Force Unleashed publisher said it still plans on attending the ESA’s annual gaming exhibition.Speculation over what has inspired the growing unrest over the ESA reached a fever pitch earlier this week when it was revealed through tax documents that the lobbying group had forfeited nearly $5.4 million in event-cancellation fees to move E3 from LA to Santa Monica in 2007. The IRS filing also indicated that ESA membership fees had spiked from about $1 million in 2006 to roughly $4.5 million in 2007 as a result of the dramatic down-scaling of its revenue-generating trade show.

Ubisoft’s second annual Ubidays showcase is hitting the Louvre museum in Paris next week. In preparation for the mega-studio’s event, it’s launched a new video portal called uPlay, to showcase its upcoming line-up. The portal will officially launch on May 29, during the second day of Ubidays, but there are six videos already available including one with JC Guyot, creative director on the new Prince of Persia game, who unveils a speed drawing of one of the prince’s supporting character, Elika. There’s also a link to a locked trailer that, while pixelated, also appears to be Prince of Persia related. Far Cry 2 producer L.P. features in a short welcome video to tell fans the FC2 development team will be at Ubidays and that the game “might be on display and, actually, it might even be playable on different platforms.” Other videos include the quirky Rabbids Secrets to Health and Happiness, starting one of those pesky rabbids and the Wii Balance Board, hinting at a possible Rayman game in development for Wii, while Dedication and Responsibility focus on snowboarding, which is no doubt a nod to Ubisoft’s upcoming Shaun White Snowboarding game. A Tom Clancy’s EndWar trailer entitled The Power of the Voice, promotes the fact that the game will be “playable entirely with voice command” and Invitation features Gearbox Software president Randy Pitchford, who will show a new trailer and gameplay footage from Brothers In Arms Hell’s Highway at Ubidays. In addition to the trailers, the “opening conference will be broadcast live on www.uplay.com on Wednesday 28th May at 7:00pm Paris time [6:00pm GMT, 10:00am PT],” according to a statement from the publisher.

The Resident Evil and Street Fighter series have both already been made into movies, but Capcom wants to see more of its game properties coming to Hollywood. In an interview with Bloomberg, Capcom president and chief operating officer Haruhiro Tsujimoto confirmed that the company was in talks to adapt other game properties into celluloid, but he refused to name them. He said, “We are in the process of working out contracts for several offers we received at the Cannes Film Festival last week and hope to make an announcement soon. If realized, the projects will have a big impact on the game and movie industries.” Tsujimoto added that, “We want to do with games what Marvel did with comics,” referencing the success of the numerous Spider-Man and X-Men film adaptations. Three previous movies have already been based on Capcom’s zombie-killing survival horror franchise Resident Evil (known as Biohazard in Japan). A second Street Fighter-inspired film, Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li is currently in development, slated for release in early 2009. Other Capcom properties that could become movies include the successful Devil May Cry series, Breath of Fire, Lost Planet, Bionic Commando, Viewtiful Joe, Mega Man, and Phoenix Wright.

The head of the International Olympic Committee thinks gamers should put down their controllers and get into sport instead. The 66-year-old president of the organisation, Jacques Rogge, has told The Times that he is concerned about the aging audience of the Olympics and wants to get more youngsters interested in competitive sports. The average age of a participant is 24, but the average Olympic viewer is 46, and an IOC member age is 61.7. Rogge told the newspaper, “Kids are attracted to visual, interactive forms of communication. It’s not going to be easy for sport to counter that. You won’t hear me saying sport is not fun, it is. But it requires austerity and discipline. The answer is achievement. You will never achieve in a video game. It is not really success.” The IOC head also believes that the popularity of screen-based entertainment, be it games or movies, has led the latest generation to a more sedentary lifestyle. In an attempt to gain the hearts and minds of the youth of today, Rogge has instructed the 3,500 athletes participating in the Beijing 2008 Olympics to spread the word that sport is cool via Facebook and other social networking sites. He commented, “The idea is, ‘Hey, we should be practicing sport.’ It’s all a different generation to me, but I see the potential to get the message across. We need to hire more young people. If they have baggy pants and pink hair, that’s OK.”

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