Surfer Girl is reporting some interesting information regarding LA Noire. Apparently Sony have dropped the game and are not helping fund it anymore - which is more fuel for a 360 release too.
The new details being reported:

• Team Bondi’s goal is to have every NPC in the city feature a distinct personality and different knowledge sets
• The game is not being funded by Sony, who dropped the title (Phil Harrison and Brendan McNamara (Team Bondi head) can’t stand each other, McNamara & Company’s tendency to miss milestones did not help either, but had very little to do with Phil’s decision), there is nothing stopping a 360 release.
• The amount of music in the primarily jazz soundtrack is “comparable to GTA.”
• The detecting mechanics are described as “an analysisfest” to which reaction has been polarizing, one calling the detective elements “fatally boring” and another remarking that the mechanics are “absolutely innovative.” The former dubs the game “Assassin’s Creed: Noir Edition” and the latter went on about “investigating the social structure of 1947 Los Angeles.”
• Finally, information about at least some of the crimes you will be investigate in the game can be found here.

Surfer Girl later updated their post with the following details about Sony’s dropping of the game:

UPDATE: Sony stopped funding the game when Phil dropped it years ago. The bad blood between Brendan and Phil, which began during the development of The Getaway, is the primary factor in the game being dropped. Team Bondi would likely still be with Sony if Phil never took control of WWS, there is a reason that Brendan affiliated Bondi with SCEA rather than SCEE, who has authority over Australia.

There is no indication that Team Bondi are going the route of Ratbag, whose title Ikon (later became Scavenger, which never made it to stores) was dropped by Rockstar after being dropped by Sony, Brendan is quite amiable with the Housers.

Those detective elements are so polarizing that the implementation of them is cited for the reason of at least one resignation and there has been a number of departures at Bondi. Internal horror stories about Bondi appear to be plentiful.

Interesting developments, we’ll have to wait and see what comes of this.

Source: Surfer Girl

This post brings our total number of “console exclusivity debate” articles to 3. Yes, we’ve now more reason to believe that LA Noire will be coming to the Xbox 360 console (as well as PS3 of course) after VideoGamer.com noticed that a job advertisement for Team Bondi posted up on Gamesutra looking for a Lead Animator, states that platforms involved are the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

Now, we don’t ever see Sony shouting about any sort of exclusivity for this game, and Team Bondi still say either “PS3″ or “next-generation consoles” depending on who you speak to, so this still doesn’t really count as “official”, but there we go.

We’re not sure how they got it, but in the past week a relatively unknown blog has some supposedly “exclusive information” on LA Noire.

• The game will be a free-roaming title with a historically-accurate recreation of Los Angeles in 1947.
• Team Bondi has even hired a costume designer to research the clothing of the era so the game’s attire can be accurate.
• Aside from main story, side missions will be based on actual cases pulled straight of the newspapers of 1947.
• A US Marine plays a big role in the story.
• Not so exclusive…but LA Noire definitely ain’t coming to Xbox 360, the size of the game is an obstacle to this.

We’re not sure how true any of these details are, or where they came from, but the story has made quite a few high profile gaming websites/blogs, so we may as well share it with you.

Thanks Surfer Girl Reviews Star Wars [via Kotaku AU]

It looks as if we won’t be seeing anything of L.A. Noire for yet another year, after Take Two released their 3rd Quarter Fiscal Results it became apparent that they’ve moved the game out of the “Fiscal 2008 line-up” and it is now nowhere to be seen.

Since the release of the game’s trailer, we’ve had absolutely no information on the game. There’s been speculation on which consoles it will be released for, but still no confirmation on that either.

We’ll keep you up to date on any developments we learn about right here at lanoire.net.

GamesIndustry.biz were able to get some confirmation from Take-Two regarding GTA IV content being Xbox 360 exclusive - which was the main point of their article, however, they also managed to ask about L.A. Noire… from the article:

The financial report also stated that fellow Take-Two title LA Noire is due out in fiscal 2008. The spokesperson suggested that both Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 releases are likely, stating, “LA Noire is being developed for next-generation systems.”

So once again it now looks like it may well be coming out for the 360 after all. We still have no solid conformation that it is for definite, but I guess we’ll have to just wait patiently for that.

Source: GamesIndustry.biz

Take-Two interactive, parent company of L.A. Noire publishers Rockstar Games recently published a press release on their website concerning their 2nd quarter financial results. In this release, a table of upcoming games due for release in fiscal 2008 was listed and L.A. Noire only had PS3 listed as it’s platform, while a number of other games listed multiple platforms. Take Two’s fiscal year ends in October, meaning L.A. Noire should be released during or before October 2008.

This PS3 exclusive “confirmation” may not surprise you, as way back in July 2005, Team Bondi orginally announced that the game would be developed “specifically for the PlayStation 3.”
However, more recently in September 2006, another article on IGN mentioned that “publisher representatives have made it a point to list L.A. Noire for ‘next-generation consoles’ and not solely the PS3″.

So while this latest press release contradicts that statement and reverts back to TB’s original intentions, it doesn’t technically serve as “official confirmation”, though it is beginning to look more and more likely that L.A. Noire is indeed only in development for the PlayStation 3. I have contacted developers Team Bondi to see if we can get an official word on which console(s) the game will be released for, and will update this post accordingly if and when I get a response.

The release of Take-Two’s financial results for Q1 2007 reveals that L.A. Noire will not be released this year. Instead it will be hitting shelves sometime during 2008, a more precise date was not mentioned.

We don’t have any more information on the game itself, but we’ll be sure to post any interesting developments we find out about in the coming months.

It seems like LA Noire may be having some excellent technology powering it. This announcement comes after it was revealed that Rockstar Games today became the second licensee to utilise NaturalMotion’s euphoria technology. This short excerpt from the press release gives the main details:

Oxford, UK-Feb 27 2007- NaturalMotion today announced a partnership with Rockstar Games, Inc., the world-renowned publishing label, to integrate NaturalMotion’s revolutionary euphoria engine into upcoming next-generation Rockstar Games titles. Rockstar’s integration of euphoria is well advanced, with today’s announcement following several months of close collaboration between the two companies.

It is important to note that as of yet no specific titles have been confirmed, though it appears we’ll be getting seperate announcements on those in the near future. It looks fairly likely that this technology will be used in Team Bondi’s LA Noire, which is of course being published by Rockstar Games. Here’s a little more info on the technology:

Based on NaturalMotion’s DMS technology, euphoria uses the processing power of PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 to simulate the human body and motor nervous system, thus creating fully interactive game characters that act differently every time. With euphoria, games move away from canned animation, towards a much richer, life-like experience that is unique to the player.

So essentially, you shouldn’t see the same movements twice from characters, it will always be different just like in real life. While this is (possibly) some of the first real information we have on the game, it’s looking quite interesting already.

Links:
NaturalMotion
Press Release (pdf)

It’s been a while since we’ve had anything to post about, and it’s been nearly 5 months since we’ve had any new media/info to update you with. However, behind the scenes we are coding a custom CMS for the site as I mentioned in my previous post. This CMS will also be implemented into other sites in the network, making it a lot easier for us to manage each site effectively.
Once we are finished with a reasonable amount of work done you will see the site receiving much more frequent updates, along with more community focused features, such as regular polls, a download database (if necessary) as well as forums.

As of now, forums are in fact set up for the site, but it would be unwise to launch them at the current time, due to the lack of information on the game, and the fact we don’t exactly have much to discuss. The forums would quickly become inactive and would be under-used. With this in mind, the forums will be launched when we feel appropriate - i.e. traffic begins to pick up and remains consistent, and information on the game is available.

Rest assured that with us being the first fan site for LA Noire, we are determined to become the number one resource for everything about the game, and are here to stay for good. Be sure to leave a comment if you have any suggestions for us, we’ll listen to any interesting ideas you have, otherwise, stay tuned and wait patiently for further updates on our progess.

Just a short message to let you all know we’ve temporarily got a WordPress blog up, powering the site. This is simply to make it easier for me to post news updates, while the custom CMS is still be worked on behind the scenes. Expect to see us relaunch in the coming months with a brand new layout and a plethora of content about the game.